Art in Montreal

In my grandmother's dining-room there was a glass-fronted cabinet and in the cabinet a piece of skin. It was a small piece only, but thick and leathery, with strands of coarse, reddish hair. It was stuck to a card with a rusty pin. On the card was some writing in faded black ink, but I was too young then to read. - Bruce Chatwin Diyar Mayil ’s Houseguest at Centre Clarke contains a series of objects that conjure a domestic space. Its loosely legible objects (a clock, a broom, a medicine cabinet, a table etc.) are obscured by being covered with a thin, textured material that vaguely resembles skin. More explicitly, it seems like a representation of skin. Before entering the narrow room where these objects are stationed, there is an accompanying text by Mojeanne Behzadi that provides a welter of trite cliches to guide you through: Mayil invites you into a space of tension and vulnerability. She asks you, its guest, to consider your positionality and relationship to home, land,