Performance Artist Who Tried to Burn Down Governor General’s Residence Given Governor General’s Award for Artistic Excellence

Gadzoa, in this 1997 Montreal police photo

The Governor General has come under fire after her office announced that controversial Montreal performance artist Gadzoa has been selected as a recipient of a Governor General's Award for Artistic Competence for her lifetime of work.

The award also comes with a $20 gift certificate for Canadian Tire.

"Gadzoa's attempt to burn my house down in 2002 was the pinnacle accomplishment of a career whose work has striven to shake us all out of our collective complacency," said a statement attributed to Governor General Adrienne Clarkson on the GG's official website. "Who knows what the future holds for this talented artist?"

However, since the announcement became public, major national newspapers, such as the National Whipping Post, the Hopeless Flail, and the Brockville Recorder and Times have plastered pictures of Gadzoa's more controversial works on their covers in recent days. Pieces such as 1993's Merde Dans un Seau (Shit in a Bucket) and 1997's Phlegm in a Pail: Just for You, Mr. Prime Minister have ignited a firestorm of controversy. Opposition Conservative Alliance Members of Parliament, normally known as staunch supporters of the arts, have denounced the award as a travesty.

"How can the Governor General be giving away awards and taxpayer dollars for such garbage?" fumed Conservative Party Heritage critic Ernie Angryman. "How can any egghead even say that any of this Godzilla woman's stuff is art? This isn't art. Art is what I say it is. Art is pretty things. Like Disney movies. And Norman Rockwell paintings. And Ian Tyson records."

Angryman admitted that he has never personally seen any of Gadzoa's works himself, but her art still repulses him. "If they're half as offensive as that guy on the radio was saying they are, well, they have no place in my Canada."

Arrested an estimated 150 times over the course of her career, often for reasons related to art, Gadzoa oozes confidence. She oozes several other things as well.

"Gadzoa sees art in everything. Everything," according to her friend and fellow member of the infamous Rubber Boot Collective, VeeVee Dauphin. "Preparing and eating a casserole made with her own toenails to demonstrate our tenuous link with the seagulls-that is pure Gadzoa. Buying a litre of milk while smearing herself with vaseline and screaming "I am seminal mother earth," in a grocery store check-out line, that is what she lives for."

Gadzoa (the Japanese word for 'kick in the groin') received international attention two years ago when she tried to burn down Rideau Hall, the Governor General's official residence, as a protest against "the colonial inequity of our bogus nation's founding fathers." Charges were dropped after she agreed to take artistic counseling.

"This is art for the people. We must not stifle the creative process," said John Ralston Saul, noted author and the Governor General's husband, at the time of the incident. "I applaud Gadzoa for her bold statement."

The English version of Gadzoa's provocative Merde Dans un Seau (Shit in a Bucket), on display in the National Gallery since 1999.

Born Charlotte Calinfour in East-end Montreal in 1966, the artist known as Gadzoa first drew attention from the artistic community and local emergency personnel when she began deliberately driving her car into inanimate objects back in the late 1980's to protest government cuts to the arts. "What remains behind, that is art," she said in a 1989 interview with Le Devoir.

A serious back injury that was the result of her wrapping her parents' Toyota Tercel around a telephone pole in 1992 caused her to change direction in her artistic pursuits.

"In the early 90's, you saw Gadzoa make a transition from the 'driving her car into things' period into the 'the throwing curling rocks through people's windows' period. This was so named because she would hurl 40-pound curling rocks through the windows of suburban homes with a homemade catapult. It was, simply brilliant. A poignant and timely artistic statement on the slumber that humankind finds itself in today," commented Barry Qwerty, curator of Montreal's 55th Street Gallery.

"Gadzoa not only represents a paradigm shift from the traditional Dadaist approach to a postmodern interpretation of Slovakian Nihilism, much as several people you've never heard of have done in the past, she also owes me money, so I have to keep saying great things about her."

OTHER CAREER HIGHLIGHTS FOR GADZOA:
An avowed Quebec sovereigntist, Gadzoa raised eyebrows when she defecated on a Canadian flag in a government-sponsored exhibit at the National Gallery in Ottawa in 1995 on the Eve of the Quebec referendum. A performance at the Smiths Falls Museum of Modern Art and Correctional Institution in 1997, when she attempted unsuccessfully to bugger a pig to protest our 'consumerist, throwaway' society also received front-page coverage in the Smiths Falls Shoplifter.

In recent years, Gadzoa has been best known for her visceral, gritty street performances in which she attacks unsuspecting strangers with a large golf umbrella.

"Usually I hit them with an umbrella. But it all depends on the emotion of the day. Some days it is hockey stick. Some days it is bamboo pole. Some days, it is merely the rage that I feel that I hit them with," said Gadzoa in a 2001 National Film Board documentary.

"If they are injured, that is too bad. That is the price for doing my art. Besides, it is not like I am killing people or anything. I am only hitting them with an umbrella."

Heritage Minister What's-her-face was evasive when asked about the award yesterday on Parliament Hill. "Hey, that's Adrienne's call. I'm too busy wiping out any record of the Copps era ever existing in my department to be concerned about something so frivolous. It is year zero."