Guillermo Del Toro: At Home With Monsters

“To find beauty in the profane. To elevate the banal. To be moved by genre. These things are vital for my storytelling. This exhibition presents a small fraction of the things that have moved me, inspired me, and consoled me as I transit through life.”

- Guillermo del Toro.

Recently I had the opportunity to visit a brand new exhibit open at the Art Gallery of Ontario that reveals the creative process of famous filmmaker Guillermo del Toro. Del Toro has a fascination with monsters, as explained on the AGO's official webpage for the exhibition: "'Guillermo del Toro believes that we need monsters,' says Jim Shedden, co-curator and the AGO’s Manager of Publishing. 'To him, the imperfections of monsters are found in all of us, whether we see them or not. At the same time, despite his empathy for the tragic monster, del Toro is fascinated with truly terrifying and invulnerable monsters. By witnessing his incredible creative process, we can make unexpected connections among different genres and narratives, high art and pop culture, and blur boundaries between fantasy and reality'".

One piece, in particular, grabbed my attention the second I entered the exhibit: a life-sized sculpture of the Pale Man, as seen in del Toro's film Pan's Labyrinth.

At first glance, the Pale Man can be seen as simply another monster in an exhibit full of monsters, but del Toro explains a deeper meaning to the appearance of the creature.

Guillermo del Toro explains in a tweet that "The Pale Man represents all institutional evil feeding on the helpless," turning the monster from Pan's Labyrinth into a symbol for exploitive white male power.

With a personal focus on feminism and trying to expose what it is that prevents women from embracing their identities, this piece encouraged me to make a sculpture that symbolizes what I believe to be the main threats to women being able to find happiness in their identity.

This piece showed me that I don't have to explicitly represent a single problem in my own artwork and that symbolism can be just as impactful. The Pale Man, being a white, human-like monster, is plain enough in its appearance that one can project onto it what they believe it represents. Different people would apply different meanings to the piece, which was the main reason I was drawn to it in the first place, and I as I left the exhibition, I knew this was one piece I wouldn't forget.

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