The AGW is thrilled to present its fall exhibition program including the feature exhibition SakKijâjuk: Art and Craft from Nunatsiavut touring to Windsor from The Rooms, Newfoundland. This ground-breaking exhibition is on its final stop in Windsor and AGW is the only Ontario venue. From the AGW collection is also Northern Narratives: Cape Dorset Prints, Recent Acquisitions and the 60th Anniversary: West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative Cape Dorset/Kinngait WBEC Studios.
“It has been some time since the AGW has presented an in-depth look at Inuit art” notes AGW Executive Director, Catharine Mastin. “This exciting program is one of the many ways that the Gallery continues to recognize the rich artistic expressions within Indigenous communities. In the feature exhibition, visitors can expect to discover a world virtually unknown to them. In collection exhibitions visitors can expect find some well-known art works and many new ones.”
SakKijâjuk: Art and Craft from Nunatsiavut (pronounced saw-KEE-eye-ook), curated by Dr. Heather Igloliorte is the first major exhibition on the art of the Labrador Inuit. SakKijâjuk — meaning “to be visible” in the Nunatsiavut dialect of Inuktitut — provides an opportunity for visitors, collectors, art historians, and art aficionados from the South and the North to come into intimate contact with the distinctive, innovative and always breath-taking work of the contemporary Inuit artists and craftspeople of Nunatsiavut.
Nunatsiavut, the Inuit region of Canada that achieved self-government in 2005, produces art that is distinct within the world of Canadian and circumpolar Inuit art. The world's most southerly population of Inuit, the coastal people of Nunatsiavut have always lived both above and below the tree line, and Inuit artists and craftspeople from Nunatsiavut have had access to a diverse range of Arctic and Subarctic flora and fauna, from which they have produced a stunningly diverse range of work.
Artists from the territory have traditionally used stone and wood for carving; fur, hide, and sealskin for wearable art; and saltwater seagrass for basketry, as well as wool, metal, cloth, beads, and paper. In recent decades, they have produced work in a variety of contemporary art media, including painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, video, and ceramics, while also working with traditional materials in new and unexpected ways.
Dr. Heather Igloliorte is an Assistant Professor of Aboriginal art history at Concordia University in Montreal. Her research interests centre on Inuit and other Native North American visual and material culture, circumpolar art studies, performance and media art, the global exhibition of Indigenous arts and culture, and issues of colonization, sovereignty, resistance and resilience.
Northern Narratives: Cape Dorset Prints drawn from the AGW collection includes print images from 17 Inuit artists published by the Kinngait Studios Cape Dorset during the late 1950s and into the 1970s. This project focusses on stories of traditional Inuit life exploring themes of hunting, travel, wildlife and the spiritual power of Canada’s North.
Recent Acquisitions features a selection of historical, modern and contemporary art showcasing key areas in which the collection has been developed. Collecting areas include art by artists of Anishnaabe and Inuit ancestry, and art from the Windsor-Essex region and western Canada.
The exhibition, 60th Anniversary: West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative Cape Dorset/Kinngait WBEC Studios includes prints and a selection of catalogues documenting the Annual Graphics Collections produced since 1959 by the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative’s Kinngait studio in Cape Dorset. The West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative was established in 1959 in Cape Dorset. The first annual Cape Dorset print collection was released the same year, containing images produced by Inuit artists in the region.
SakKijâjuk: Art and Craft from Nunatsiavut is presented in Windsor with the support of Rochelle & Bill Tepperman.
Fridays Live! is the official launch for all fall/winter exhibitions on Friday, October 18, 2019 from 7:00–10:00pm. The event is FREE for AGW members and $15.00 for non-members. For more information on the opening weekend events, visit www.agw.ca.