INUVIK
Squeezed in between the Great Northern Arts Festival and the Inuit Circumpolar Council general assembly was a notable exhibition of Inuit art.

Christine Lalonde curated an exhibit of Inuit artwork from across the Arctic during the Great Northern Arts Festival and the Inuit Circumpolar Council general assembly this month. - Shawn Giilck/NNSL photo

The exhibit was open for more than two weeks this month, but many people might have missed it in the crush of other activities. It was held in the former Video Effects building.

Curated by Christine Lalonde, the associate curator of indigenous art, National Gallery of Canada, the exhibit was a tremendous collection of Inuit art from all of the regions. That included the art of at least one regional talent, Bill Nasogaluak, and artwork from the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation.

"The exhibit is called Nunali, The Place Where We Live," Lalonde said July 25, the last day of the exhibition. "It's a phrase given to me by Jackoposie Oopakak, a master carver in Iqaluit. It really encapsulated the world view of Inuit, where people and animals are interconnected through their shared environment.

"It was really an unprecedented thing for an exhibition to come from the Inuit Art Foundation, for works to be shipped up here," she continued.

"It's been a good experiment, it's been a good test run with enough groundwork that we could do it again. Maybe in Barrow in 2018 for the next ICC conference."

If that happens, it will likely be under another curator though, since she is "stepping back" from the foundation in the near future.

Lalonde said she put together the exhibit to complement both the Great Northern Arts Festival and the ICC general assembly.

"I was thinking about an exhibition of the Inuit Art Foundation to come here, and I thought of the Inuit Circumpolar Council assembly in particular, and I found ut there wouldn't be a lot of visual art overlap. So I was thinking about some of the issues they would be discussing, which would be of great importance to Inuit society and the circumpolar region, and that connection to the land.

"I wanted to do a show that would explore those deep roots in terms of cultural expression, and that would also be really relevant to the topics being discussed by the delegates."

Lalonde said she was able to put together a "very powerful" exhibit through loans, including a loan from the IRC, to showcase Inuit art from the very beginning of the contemporary period of Inuit art to the current period.

"I think it's a dynamic, diverse exhibition," said Nasogaluak. "It touches on all sides of the past, present and future. Some of the people who are in there are monumental to Inuit art. I feel honoured that I'm actually in there. I feel like an emerging artist in front of them."

He contributed one of his better-known works to the exhibit – a painting of a group of muskox.

"We've had some very nice visits," Lalonde said. "We had artists come down from the Great Northern Arts Festival, and they were astonished by the selection of works. I haven't been in the gallery all that much to get the general visitor reaction."

Lalonde called the project "very successful" and said it shows there is an opportunity here in Inuvik for the establishment of some form of cultural centre or museum to display such works.

Similar facilities are in operation in Anchorage, where an exhibit from the Smithsonian Museum is on permanent display, and in Gjoa Haven, which has a new heritage centre with repatriated exhibits from Oslo, Norway.

Lalonde suggested that the new Inuvik Community Corporation building might be a spot where such an exhibit can be placed.

"It's part of an emerging scene and eventually, if there can't be a well-established cultural centre in each community, there could be a shared network where pieces could travel."