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May we suggest

Spring 2019
Spring 2019: SPACETIME

SPACETIME

From March 15 to June 15, 2019

In this issue we bring together some inspiring voices that defy political boundaries—diverse, but united with a deep and shining love for their roots. We bring forward some of our most pressing questions and concerns from our perspective as a pair of Inuuk from the diaspora. Throughout, our main purpose is clear: to make space for Inuit and other circumpolar Indigenous artists. The following principles helped us narrow our focus through all the beauty of the circumpolar world and its artists: the cyclic and immemorial nature of time; past and future kin; releasing binary-based thinking in all regards; the importance of community; and our transcendent relationship to the cosmos. We found inspiration in the work of the Isuma collective, and celebrate their selection to represent Canada at its pavilion for the 2019 Venice Biennale. The community-based, forward-looking, high-tech work of Isuma is foundational. Isuma has pushed through and beyond the forced aesthetics expected of Inuit art, unsettling the line between traditional and contemporary. In a similar battle, we question the boundaries of North and South (what do these terms even mean?), seeking ways that one may be Inuk outside their homelands. In her Keynote, Tarralik Duffy ties together the strings that outline what makes Inuit unabashedly unique and contemporary. Time and time again, boundaries are forced upon us. Our work is to dispel them. —Kablusiak and asinnajaq ᐊᓯᓐᓇᐃᔭᖅ

Features

Aural Cycles

How does time connect us? In this conversation on Inuit throat singing and Sámi yoiking, Niillas Holmberg and Tiffany Ayalik discuss the importance of maintaining cultural autonomy

The Many Ways We Love

Why we must create space to celebrate the resilience of sexually and gender-diverse perspectives

Isuma Is a Cumulative Effort

How a collective continues the Inuit tradition of strength and innovation through new media

Ancestral Threads

Through research I find clues to our centuries-old traditions, connecting stories to markings and pulling the past into the present

Send and Receive

The converging shores of making and seeing, and the magic of moving hands

Spotlight

Generations

An international survey of 10 artists working across media, from traditional to cutting-edge

Cover Image

Innua

Etching and aquatint, 66 x 73.6 cm. Detail. From 2007. Courtesy Inuit Gallery of Vancouver, Ltd.

by Germaine Arnaktauyok

This Issue

Who Is Not Being Heard?

In their editors’ note for the Spring 2019 issue of Canadian Art, Kablusiak and asinnajaq ᐊᓯᓐᓇᐃᔭᖅ write about making space for Inuit and other circumpolar Indigenous artists

Preview

Conversations with artists and curators on upcoming projects

Keynote

The Vision

The unexpected yet clichéd revelation of leaving home, with all the usual small-town angst of needing to get out, was that I found my inherent Inukness the farther away I wandered

Poetry

Akia

by Siku Allooloo

Legacy

Stories Not Told

Let’s honour Annie Pootoogook’s profound work, legacy and life. But let’s also talk about Inuit art as an industry, and who is left out of institutional reconciliation

Dialogue

Mother Tongue

In her directorial debut, Lucy Tulugarjuk ᓘᓯ ᑐᓗᒐᕐᔪᒃ, ᐊᓈᓇᐅᔪᖓ, ᐱᖑᐊᕐᑎᐅᓪᓗᖓ, ᐊᔾᔨᓕᐅᕆᔨᐅᓪᓗᖓᓗ worked with her 11-year-old daughter, Nuvvija Mikili Tulugarjuk. Here, asinnajaq ᐊᓯᓐᓇᐃᔭᖅ asks them about their collaboration

Artist Project

Undisrupted Cycles

by Inga-Wiktoria Påve

Reviews

Recent exhibitions, books, films and more

Split Tooth

Tanya Tagaq, Viking Canada, 208 pp., $29.95

Overheard

Breathe In

by Aku Matu

Spring 2019: SPACETIME