Figuring Redemption: Resighting My Self in the Art of Michael Snow

M. Wayne Cunningham is a past executive director of the Saskatchewan
Arts Board and the former director of Academic and Career Programs at
East Kootenay Community College.

Tila Kellman, a scholar and critic of art theory, sets out in this book
to answer the question “of how spectators, you and I, implicitly
renegotiate how we understand ourselves … when faced with the task of
making sense of a challenging piece of contemporary art,” and in
particular the work of philosopher-artist and experimental filmmaker
Michael Snow.

What is the nature of our engagement, Kellman asks, when we view
Snow’s series, Walking Woman, his self-portraits of his holography, or
his fascinating experimental film, La region centrale? She skilfully
dissects Snow’s artifacts and follows their creative processes,
relating them to the concepts of Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin,
Jacques Derrida, and Paul Ricouer; to the critical comments of Clement
Greenberg and Northrop Frye; and to the cinematic observations of Bruce
Elder and Annette Michelson. Within these contexts, she integrates the
subjectivity of the book’s readers (and her own) and the viewers of
Snow’s art (herself included).

Kellman’s meticulously researched book includes several color plates
and more than 20 black-and-white reproductions. One of her
contemporaries rightly concluded that Figuring Redemption “is a
landmark in the critical interpretation of Canadian art.”