The Hollow Man
2026

To honour esteemed citizens, civic bodies erect statues of them at great expense; maintain them with even more expense, love, and devotion; and offer these subjects up as examples to be emulated. Figures to inspire and be lauded. This project, The Hollow Man, is the opposite of that.

 

Ian Alistair Mackenzie (1890-1949) was a Liberal MP for the riding of Vancouver Centre throughout the Second World War. His deeds while in office have been largely overlooked by history, which is a shame; they were atrocious. Other than becoming embroiled in an armaments procurement scandal, the only feats he performed while in office were to forcibly remove the Japanese Canadian community from the British Columbia coast, dispossess 22,000 people of their property, strip them of their human and civil rights, and shred the fabric of the Nikkei culture in Canada. Because of his machinations, the post-internment Japanese Canadian community became geographically fragmented, forcing many to start again in isolation. They were economically wounded, having lost houses, businesses, livelihoods, and most personal possessions. And many lost their culture, with thousands opting to reject their Nikkei heritage and assimilate to western “norms.” Trauma and feelings of shame and betrayal were often repressed with profound ripple effects through future generations. For someone whose actions were so deeply consequential to so many thousands, Mackenzie has largely evaded scrutiny; unlike many other historical bad actors, his name is not well known outside the Japanese Canadian community, and his face would be unrecognizable to all but a handful. I am interested in changing this and bringing him to account; I am interested in putting a face to his misdeeds.

 

Project background:

Early work on this project began in 2019 and coincided with a very charged moment in our relationship to civic monuments. We've seen many examples in recent years of a memorial statue prompting difficult but productive conversations on social justice, sometimes accompanied by interventions and sometimes leading to its removal through one mechanism or another. The result of this process, ideally, is an unvarnished understanding of the historical figure, and a more factual historic record.

 

The impetus for The Hollow Man was the idea that, if reevaluating civic statuary can be a productive, potentially healing process, one that helps the broader public view historical figures more honestly, what happens when there is no statue to act as a locus for these conversations and actions?

 

Will that bad actor continue to evade scrutiny?

 

This question was top of mind as I considered Ian Alistair Mackenzie, all but unknown outside the Nikkei community. I wanted to create a temporary sculpture that could serve a number of functions: It could be a site for discourse and a tool for education. It could be a cautionary flag to the policy makers of today, signalling that history is watching. It could be a site where those affected could vent anger if they wished to do so, an effigy of sorts. And crucially, from the start, this statue was destined to be removed and destroyed at the end of a prescribed period, an action that is intended to be a cathartic one.

 

The sculpture of Mackenzie stands outside the Livestock Building at Hastings Park. This is where, in 1942 he designated animal stalls as a defacto prison for over 8,000 Japanese Canadians, including my grandmother. This is the building where they were marshalled while they awaited their forced expulsion from the coast.

 

Most visitors will approach this artwork from the back view. They will first encounter something resembling a figure, but an empty one. It is held together with visible bolts and spot welds; it is coarse and unpolished—clearly not the statue of someone being honoured. This is a shell, representing a person devoid of a moral core, an apt representation of a man who victimized many of his most vulnerable constituents because he knew it would garner him votes. Unlike most civic statuary, Mackenzie's is not made of precious bronze; bronze statues have gravitas. This sculpture is made of inexpensive aluminum, roughly formed using the quick industrial process of sandcasting. Aluminum carries with it associations of pop cans, takeout containers, or aluminum foil. The material connotations here are of something disposable, temporary, one step away from the recycling bin.

 

Viewed from the front, this is a faithful likeness of Mackenzie. It shows the face of someone who could and should have made more compassionate choices.

 

At six foot three inches tall, Mackenzie was an imposing man, and by most accounts a very persuasive orator. Yet he used his considerable gifts not for the betterment of all but to hurt some of society's most vulnerable. It was his will to do so. On the few occasions when my family members were willing to discuss wartime injustices, the same phrase kept popping up: “Shikata ga nai”: “it couldn't be helped.” For them this was likely true, but for Mackenzie it was not. Ian Mackenzie had a choice, and he chose to stoop to crass opportunism, dehumanize a people, and reap political and economic rewards. Sadly, his actions would not be out of place in the political climate of today, where racist scapegoating is practised by cynical policymakers north and south of the border. I see value in sending a message to today's leaders that their actions will be judged eventually, that their legacy might be a condemnation.

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Project Duration:

Widespread internment began on February 24, 1942, with an order-in-council passed under the Defence of Canada Regulations of the War Measures Act, which gave the federal government the power to intern all "persons of Japanese racial origin" at Hastings Park and further afield. They were not permitted to return to the coast until April 1, 1949, seven years, one month, and eight days later. In total, the community was subjected to this injustice for 2,593 days.

 

The Hollow Man is a temporary project intended to stand for a corresponding number of days, after which the sculpture will be removed and destroyed. At the end of the project, the fasteners will be cut off with an angle grinder, the pieces disassembled and removed from site, the figure will be melted down, and the raw materials directed towards something that will benefit the community.

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Maintenance:

People interact with their public sculptures in many ways. Sculptures are used as backdrops for selfies, rubbed for luck, named as designated meeting places, and are sometimes co-opted as a support for graffiti or sticker tagging. These interactions are of great interest to me because they reveal how people feel about the subject. A statue of Terry Fox will reveal evidence of loving gestures; Ian Mackenzie will more likely inspire ambivalence or worse. These interactions will in a sense be a kind of referendum on his actions and his legacy. A physical record and social media palimpsest of how people feel about him. Unlike most civic monuments, this statue will not be cleaned and maintained; it will remain untethered from the care of custodians and art conservators for as long as it is standing. We will see what people make of it.

 

The “real” story of this artwork is not written by me but the people who visit it. The story has just started.

 

This is not an easy artwork by any stretch of the imagination. It is intended to provoke serious conversation about our civic values, about power, abuse of power, about the historical record and the people who get to write it, and the ways we as a society do or don't own up to fraught histories.