Cultural Floe: Modern and Inuit Traditions

Shuvinai Ashoona, School Bus, ink pencil crayon on paper, 2006/2007.

Curated by: Dr. Anna Hudson

This exhibition will juxtapose sculpture and drawing produced at the beginning and (arguably) end of the ethnically defined field of Inuit modern art. During the 1950s an international market developed for carving produced in the regions now known as Nunavut and Nunavik. Sixty years later, following significant attainments in Aboriginal self-governance, current Inuit art now flows into an expansive international contemporary art practice. In this new context, individual artists are celebrated as witnesses to a new global reality. Inuit traditional knowledge privileges the expression of personal experience over received information. The subjective views of life captured in these sculptures and drawings advance the continuity of an inuit way of being in the world and offer a template of cultural influence on contemporary culture. Among the artists featured are: Shuvinai Ashoona, Tim Pitsiulak, William Noah, and Idris Moss-Davies.