I painted people because I wanted to know them better.
Lucian Freud
On this day, 22 years ago, a 29-year-old womans art was getting protested in Gastown.
It was cloudy and eight degrees, but the 60-person crowd filing into the room was fever-pitch. Katarina Kat Thorsen, the artist under fire, took her seat quietly in the centre, surrounded by her detractors, supporters and controversial artwork, and, after hearing everyone argue their points, proceeded to say nothing in her own defence.
The setting of the forum was Powell Streets now defunct Fifty-Six Gallery. The problem? Titties. Or rather, the colour of them.
The trouble began at the same location 11 days earlier opening night of Thorsens exhibition. Thorsen had sent out photographic invitations for a celebration of the female breast as life force and sexual focus, featuring a womans ample soapy breast. However, nothing quite like that photo appeared on the walls of the gallery.
The opening was attended by many women who were already irritated by the invitation image, Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»Sun art critic Ann Rosenbergs wrote in her review. Some became more annoyed when they saw the interpretations of black womens sexuality and motherliness for the first time, and discovered they were created by a white woman.
Causing the furor were 15 12x15 paintings depicting nude and semi-nude black women. Many found Thorsens expression of the plump black mother goddess prurient and offensive.
According to Thorsen, leading the anti-fecundity mob were 12 furious women from the Black Uterus League, who were the suspected source of cryptic messages in guestbooks at prior showings.
The fact that Kats five-year-old daughter, Anna, is half-Zambian was unknown to most critics. Except maybe the hardcore lesbian who whipped off her top to expose her breasts to Anna, shouting, Aint I a woman?! before the little girl could be taken away.
But that wasn't the high-point of the evening. Thorsen also says a drink was thrown in her husbands face, and heated debates quickly descended into all-out screaming matches. The guestbook was littered with blunt comments.
Paint your own tits,rebuked one gallery-goer.
In an after-story, arts writer Ellen Saenger noted that censorship of politically-incorrect art was in vogue in BC at the time, and pointed to the tribulations of Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»playwright and his Dim Sum Diaries around the same time. Leiren-Young was branded a racist after his five-part work aired on CBC radio.
As days passed, the protests against Thorsen got more intense and the gallery debated pulling the paintings early, but decided to host a mediated forum on April 24, 1991 instead.
Thorsen says she had no idea how to handle it, until a mentor told her to simply sit there and listen, and let the art speak for itself.
The night of the forum, amid all the accusations hurled at Thorsen, she was predominantly labeled naive.
The artist sits today with WE in the front lounge of 1181 on Davie, as helpers half her age race around setting up her latest show. She is laughing with Anna, now 27 and editor of fashion blog , as they reminisce. Kat says, in retrospect, it was a successful show, and suggests playfully that the flashing incident might explain a lot about the woman Anna is today. Annas raspy guffaw in return implies shes not so sure about that.
She stares at her mother adoringly. The younger Thorsens sculpted features are accented by runway-length false eyelashes and hair fashioned into a futuristic Pickelhaube. Katarina is suited up punk for the occasion.
A lot has changed in the two decades since I Love Titty. Namely, that its hard to recall a Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»gallery opening that wild since. And there isnt a shred of naivety left in Katarina Thorsen.
Thorsen currently runs a youth art therapy program on the Downtown Eastside with her brother. She also used to be heavily involved with Gallery Gachet an artist-run creative hub on the DTES.
She came to Canada from Sweden as a child. Her father, Roar, was also an artist. They sent their book, Drawn Together Maintaining Connections with Art to the publisher 10 days before he passed away.
She earned a Bachelor of Science degree from UBC, and, when she was pregnant with Anna, decided to study at Emily Carr. She now has two children: Anna, and a 25-year-old son, who is autistic.
She is best known these days for her street art. A semi-anonymous fixture on the DTES, she says her living art wall of original, wheatpasted portraits in the lane behind Harbour Light at Cordova and Main, is the ever-evolving possession of the people who pass by it every day. She believes that by giving art away, you enhance its ability to heal.
No longer a gallery artist, the launch of her fashion/music/art project is the first time she is revealing herself openly to the public, and jokes that her street art fans in New York and LA will be surprised to learn she is 51, white and female.
Thorsens current style coalesced around a TED talk given 
by TED prize winner . After receiving the prestigious in 2011, the anonymous French street artist was tasked to change the world. He proceeded to explore whether art could do that.
Described as a photograffeur and the of the 21st century, JR flyposts in public and often high-conflict locations.
When you paste an image, its just paper and glue. People can tear it, tag on it, or even pee on it the people in the street, they are the curator. The rain and the wind will take them off anyway. They are not meant to stay, he explains during his powerful 25-minute presentation (see below).
When Kat and her students have paste-ups at The Wall, men from the detox centre often come out to join them. In between visits, mystery artists make subtle changes.
Kat is also planning a large-format JR-style pasting of photos her students took of women from .
Can art change the world? No, it cant. But it can encourage you to do so, she explains.
Kat plans to take a step back from the frontlines of Intersections, and focus her energy on By Post Street and spreading her message of inclusive art. She anticipates holding pop-up art shows around the world, where guests come to draw and paint on her creations.
And, with , mother and daughter are working together for the first time. T-shirts designed by Anna are adorned with iconic limited-edition portraits by Kat. The T-shirts are then produced in Gastown.
To design them, Anna made a checklist of everything she liked and disliked about the cut and feel of T-shirts in her closet, and has created the perfect unisex Tee.
The first T-shirt collection is Karl Lagerfeld, Anna Wintour and DJ Riccardo BHI. Next month theyll release an entirely new set. And just like wheatpaste on a wall, when theyre gone, theyre gone.
Were any of our WE readers at Thorsens I Love Titty exhibition in 1991? Share comments on this story below, or on and .
Photos taken by Kate McLaren and Viranlly Liemena
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