The cowboy has become an iconic symbol of masculinity, an image that has been shared through advertising and pop culture, but the cowboy is also a historical representation of migrant labour and immigration across North America.

Silent Spikes from artist Kenneth Tam, now on at Contemporary Calgary, explores the juxtaposition and contrast between all of the different ideas that make up the cowboy—from the modern to the birth of the profession in the United States.

Tam’s work showcases the Cowboy through photographs and a two-channel video, meant to bring different images together simultaneously to encourage viewers to consider what they mean.

“Cowboys are shorthand for all these different ideas about masculinity, about specifically as American as the west itself, and the way in which this figure so embedded within the way that the country even thinks about itself,” said Tam.

As part of the artistic process, Tam had his participants dress up as cowboys and engage in thematic presentations not normally associated with the cowboy ideal, such as vulnerability and sensuality.

All of the participants in Silent Spikes were Asian men, which Tam said further explores that imagery and juxtaposition. Although the work was originally commissioned in 2019, it has taken on a new importance given the fraught relationship between immigration and the government in the United States, he said.

“A project like this can definitely remind us of the important contributions that these groups have made, and to complicate these very pejorative and derogatory ways in which we’re immigrants are being framed currently,” Tam said.

“I think for me, the project every time I exhibit it, it’s always interesting to see how it is in dialogue with the community that it’s being exhibited in, and what different kinds of conversations might happen from that. I think there’s so much interest now in rethinking these histories of migrant labour.”

Continuing conversation through art with the Calgary Stampede

Kanika Anand, Senior Curator at Contemporary Calgary, said that bringing Silent Spikes to the gallery was part of the now three-year commitment by Contemporary Calgary to present exhibitions in relation to the Calgary Stampede and western culture.

“We’re really kind of diving into what that means and what it means for the fabric of a city like Calgary, often referenced as Cowtown, but gently also beginning to negotiate aspects of the cowboy archetype, what movement means, what sharing social space between between men in intimate and non intimate ways means,” Anand said.

She said that the exhibition also fits nicely into the continuing conversation that the city is having about Chinatown and reconciling with the history of racist actions against that community.

“We’ve had Chinatown move in the city itself, at least three times, and that is an important history to engage with. It’s also a very important present to engage with,” Anand said.

Anand said the ongoing exhibitions of works related to the Stampede and western culture has been well received by members of the public and has created a lot of dialogue.

“Our expectation is engagement. The more people engage, the more dialogue, and the more conversation and the more nuanced it becomes. The work itself is incredibly layered and nuanced, and that’s what the expectation is,” she said.

Silent Spikes runs at Contemporary Calgary until Nov. 16.