ᐊᕙᑖᓂᑦ ᑕᒪᐃᓐᓂᑦ ᓄᓇᑐᐃᓐᓇᓂᑦ / Among All These Tundras

ᐊᕙᑖᓂᑦ ᑕᒪᐃᓐᓂᑦ ᓄᓇᑐᐃᓐᓇᓂᑦ

Among All These Tundras
September 18 to December 7, 2019

Free public reception
Wednesday, September 18 from 6 to 9 p.m.

ᐊᓯᓐᓇᔭᖅ
ᓛᑯᓗᒃ ᐅᐃᓕᐊᒻᓴᓐ ᐸᑦᑑᕆ
ᑲᕈᓚ ᑯᕋᕼᐊᓐ
ᒫᔾᔭ ᕼᐋᓕᓐᑐ ᐅᓇᓗ ᓵᒥ ᕕᓐᓚᓐᒥᐅᑕᖅ
ᖃᑉᓗᓯᐊᖅ
ᓵᓐᔭ ᑲᓕᕼᐅ-ᑰᒻᔅ
ᔪᐊᖅ ᓇᓐᑰ
ᑕᕐᕋᓕᒃ ᐹᑐᔨ
ᐱᐅᓕ ᐸᑐ
ᐃᓅᑎᖅ ᓯᑐᐊᑦᔅ
ᑲᔨᓐ ᐸᓐ ᕼᐅᕕᓕᓐ
ᐊᓕᓴᓐ ᐊᑰᑦᓲᒃ ᒍᐊᑕᓐ

asinnajaq
Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory
Carola Grahn
Marja Helander
Kablusiak
Sonya Kelliher-Combs
Joar Nango
Taqralik Partridge
Barry Pottle
Inuuteq Storch
Couzyn van Heuvelen
Allison Akootchook Warden

ᑕᑯᔭᒐᖃᕐᕕᖕᒥ ᑲᒪᔨᑦ: Hᐃᑐ ᐃᒡᓗᓕᐅᖅᑎ, ᐋᐃᒥ ᐳᕈᑎ ᐊᒻᒪᓗ ᓴᕆᓴ ᐹᓐ ᕼᐃᐅᓕᒐ
ᓴᕿᑕᐅᔪᖅ ᐊᒻᒪᓗ ᑐᓂᔭᐅᔪᖅ ᑖᒃᑯᓇᖓᑦ ᓕᓄᑦ ᐊᒻᒪᓗ ᐲᓇ ᐊᓕᓐ ᓴᓇᖕᖑᐊᖅᓯᒪᔪᓂᒃ ᑕᑯᔭᒐᖃᕐᕕᒃ, ᑳᓐᑯᑎᐊ ᐃᓕᓐᓂᐊᕐᕕᒃᔪᐊᖅ

Curated by Heather Igloliorte, Amy Dickson and Charissa von Harringa
Produced and circulated by the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University 

ᐊᕙᑖᓂᑦ ᑕᒪᐃᓂᑦ ᓄᓇᑐᐃᓐᓇᓂᑦ, ᐊᑎᖓ ᐱᔭᐅᓯᒪᔪᖅ ᑕᐃᒎᓯᕐᒥᑦ “ᐊᖕᖏᕋᕋ ᐆᒻᒪᑎᓐᓃᑦᑐᖅ” ᑎᑎᕋᖅᓯᒪᔭᖓ ᓵᒥᒥᐅᑕᖅ ᓂᐅᔅ-ᐊᔅᓚᒃ ᕚᑭᐊᐹ, ᓴᕿᔮᖅᑎᑕᐅᔪᖅ ᓄᓇᖅᑲᖅᑳᖅᓯᒪᔪᑦ ᓴᓇᖕᖑᐊᖅᑎᖏᓐᓂᑦ ᓇᑭᑐᐃᓐᓇᖅ ᑲᔾᔨᐊᓂ ᓄᓇᕐᔪᐊᑉ ᐅᑭᐅᖅᑕᖅᑐᐊᓂ ᐅᑯᐊ ᓴᓇᔭᐅᔪᑦ ᐅᖃᐅᓯᑦ ᐊᒻᒪᓗ ᓂᕈᐊᖅᑕᐅᓯᒪᔪᓄᑦ ᐃᓄᖕᓄᑦ ᐅᖃᖅᓯᒪᔭᐅᔪᑦ ᒫᓐᓇ ᐅᑭᐅᖅᑕᖅᑐᖅ ᐃᓱᒫᓘᑎᒋᓪᓗᒍ ᑐᑭᓯᓇᖅᓯᑎᑕᐅᕙᓪᓕᐊᑎᓪᓗᒋᑦ ᓄᓇ, ᐅᖃᐅᓯᖅ, ᓄᓇᖃᖅᑐᑦ ᐊᒻᒪᓗ ᐅᒃᐱᕐᓂᖅᑖᑲᓐᓂᕐᓂᖅ. ᓴᓇᖑᐊᖅᑎᑦ ᓄᓇᖅᑲᖅᑳᖅᓯᒪᔪᑦ ᓄᓇᖏᓐᓂᑦ ᑕᒫᖓᑦ ᓄᓇᕐᔪᐊᑉ ᑲᔾᔨᐊᓂᑦ ᐅᑭᐅᖅᑕᖅᑐᖅ ᑐᓴᕐᑎᑦᑎᔪᑦ ᐃᒻᒪᑲᓪᓚᓂᑦ ᖃᓪᓗᓈᖑᖅᑎᑕᐅᓯᒪᒐᒥᒃ ᐊᒻᒪᓗ ᐊᑐᖅᓯᒪᔭᑎᒃ ᐳᐃᒍᓇᓐᖏᑦᑐᑦ ᐃᓅᓯᕆᓚᐅᖅᑕᒥᖕᓂᑦ, ᐊᒻᒪᓗ ᐊᑕᐅᓯᐅᓕᕐᓂᖅ ᓴᐳᒻᒥᓂᐊᕐᓗᒋᑦ ᐅᑭᐅᖅᑕᖅᑐᖅ ᐆᒪᔪᓕᒫᖏᑦ ᐊᕙᑎᓕᒫᖏᓪᓗ, ᐅᖃᐅᓯᖏᑦ, ᐃᓄᖏᑦ ᐊᒻᒪᓗ ᖃᐅᔨᒪᓂᖏᑦ ᑕᒫᖓᑦ ᐱᐅᓐᖏᑦᑐᐋᓗᖕᓂᑦ ᐊᒃᑐᖅᑕᐅᓂᖓᓄᑦ ᓯᓚ ᐅᖂᓯᓂᖓᓄ ᐊᓯᑦᔨᕐᓂᖓᓄᑦ, ᓄᓇᕐᔪᐊᖅ ᓄᓇᒥᑦ ᐲᔭᐃᔪᒪᔪᑦ, ᐱᕈᖅᑎᑦᑎᕙᓪᓕᐊᔪᑦ ᑲᓐᐸᓂᕐᔪᐊᓂᒃ, ᐊᒻᒪᓗ ᓄᓇᖃᑎᒌᓐᖏᑦᑐᕐᔪᐊᑦ ᓵᓚᒌᖃᑦᑕᐅᑎᒐᓱᐊᖅᑐᑦ. ᑲᑐᔾᔨᓗᑕ, ᐅᑯᐊ ᓴᓇᔭᐅᔪᑦ ᑕᑯᑎᑦᑎᕗᒍᑦ ᐃᓚᒌᒍᓯᖏᓐᓂᒃ ᐊᕙᑖᓂᑦ ᐊᒃᑐᒐᒃᓴᐅᔪᑦ ᐊᒻᒪᓗ ᑭᓱᓕᒫᑦᓯᐊᖏᑦ ᓄᓇᖅᑲᖅᑳᖅᓯᒪᔪᑦ ᖃᐅᔨᒪᓂᖏᑦ ᐊᑐᖅᑕᐅᓗᑎᒃ, ᓄᑖᓂᒃ ᐱᓕᕆᔾᔪᑎᖃᕐᓕᕐᓂᖅ ᐊᒻᒪᓗ ᓄᖑᑉᐸᓪᓕᐊᓂᖏᑦᑐᓂᒃ, ᑎᔅᓯᓇᖅᑐᑦ ᐊᒻᒪᓗ ᐊᑐᕐᓗᒍ ᐊᓐᓇᒍᓐᓇᕐᓂᖅ, ᐊᒻᒪᓗ ᑕᒪᑦᑕ ᑲᑐᑎᓗᑎᒍᑦ ᐱᔭᒃᓴᕆᔭᕗᑦ ᐅᑭᐅᖅᑕᖅᑐᑉ ᐃᓅᓯᖓ ᐊᒻᒪᓗ ᓄᓇᖓ.

Among All These Tundras, a title taken from the poem ‘My Home Is in My Heart’ by famed Sámi writer Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, features contemporary art by Indigenous artists from around the circumpolar world. Together, their works politically and poetically express current Arctic concerns towards land, language, sovereignty and resurgence. Artists from throughout the circumpolar north share kinship with each other and their ancestors, love for their homelands, and respect for the land and its inhabitants. Yet they also share histories of colonialism and experience its ongoing legacies and are united in their desire to protect northern ecologies, languages, peoples and knowledge from the nefarious effects of climate change, encroaching industry and competition. These resistance efforts do not merely express, they give shape to a collective ecology of care, a “decolonial love” (in the words of Leanne Simpson and others) that is both generous and generative. These works invite viewers to contemplate relationships between textual and embodied Indigenous knowledges, innovation and sustainability, humour and resilience, and our collective responsibility to northern life and land.

ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑑᓕᖅᑕᖏᑦ ᕉᑕ ᖃᔮᕐᔪᐊᖅ
Translation by Rhoda Kayakjuak

Free Public Events

• Spoken Word Performance & Writing Activity with Taqralik Partridge
  Saturday, September 21, 2019 at 2 p.m.
  Co-presented with Wapatah: Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge
  Join Inuk artist, writer, curator, throatsinger, spoken word poet and Onsite Gallery exhibiting artist, Taqralik Partridge, for a spoken word performance and writing activity.
• Curators’ Tour with Heather Igloliorte, Amy Dickson and Charissa von Harringa
  Friday, September 27, 2019 at 6:30 p.m.
  Join Heather Igloliorte, Amy Dickson and Charissa von Harringa for a curatorial tour of ᐊᕙᑖᓂᑦ ᑕᒪᐃᓐᓂᑦ ᓄᓇᑐᐃᓐᓇᓂᑦ / Among All These Tundras.
• Exhibition Tour with Ryan Rice
  Thursday, October 17, 2019 at 6:30 p.m.
  Join Ryan Rice for an exhibition tour of ᐊᕙᑖᓂᑦ ᑕᒪᐃᓐᓂᑦ ᓄᓇᑐᐃᓐᓇᓂᑦ / Among All These Tundras.
• imagineNATIVE Art Crawl
  Thursday, October 24, 2019 from 5:15 to 5:50 p.m.
  Co-presented with imagineNATIVE Media + Arts Festival
  This year's annual art crawl kicks off at Onsite Gallery.
• Peter Morin: Reciprocity with Among All These Tundras
  Thursday, November 14, 2019 at 6:30 p.m. 
  Join Peter Morin for a performative reciprocal exchange with the artworks in ᐊᕙᑖᓂᑦ ᑕᒪᐃᓐᓂᑦ ᓄᓇᑐᐃᓐᓇᓂᑦ / Among All These Tundras.
• The Fifth Region Film Screening and Conversation
  Wednesday, November 20, 2019 at 6:30 p.m.
  Co-presented with Mobilizing Inuit Cultural Heritage
  Join us for a film screening of The Fifth Region, followed by a conversation with filmmaker Aeyliya Husain and film subjects Nancy Saunders and Joshua Stribbell.
• Inuit Art On-Line
  Thursday, November 28, 2019 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.
  Co-presented with Wapatah: Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge
  This public symposium will convene a panel of Inuit artists and scholars to discuss the role and importance of materiality in the creation and presentation of Inuit art. 
• Launch of the Virtual Platform for Indigenous Art
  Friday, December 13, 2019 from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m.
  Co-presented with Wapatah: Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge
  Celebrate the launch of the Virtual Platform for Indigenous Art (VPIA) prototype. The VPIA is a custom digital platform designed to facilitate Indigenous access and contributions to Indigenous artworks in museum and gallery collections around the world.

Curator Biographies

Dr. Heather Igloliorte is the University Research Chair in Indigenous Circumpolar Arts at Concordia University in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal, where she also leads the Inuit Futures in Arts Leadership SSHRC Partnership Grant and Co-Directs the Initiative for Indigenous Futures Cluster (IIF) in the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology with Professor Jason Edward Lewis. Igloliorte currently serves as the Co-Chair of the Indigenous Circle for the Winnipeg Art Gallery, working on the development of the new national Inuit Art Centre; on the Board of Directors for North America's largest Indigenous art historical association, the Native North American Art Studies Association; is Vice-President of the Inuit Art Foundation; and sits on the Faculty Council of the Otsego Institute for Native American Art History at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York, among others.

Amy Dickson is an emerging curator and doctoral student in the Art History program at Concordia University. Her research focuses on the practice of Inuit artists within urban spaces and the role of art in the construction of place. Amy holds a BA and an MA in Art History, both from Carleton University. Her writing has been featured in Inuit Art Quarterly and esse arts + opinions.

Charissa von Harringa is a PhD Researcher in Art History at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec. She holds a B.A. in Anthropology from New York University (2007) and an M.A. in Art History from Concordia University (2016). Von Harringa’s academic area of focus lies at the intersection of several fields including Circumpolar, Indigenous, Memory and Performance Studies. Through her doctoral work she examines the media-based practices, archival dispositions, and networked agencies of pan-Inuit and Sámi artists. These are analyzed as they engage past and present Arctic discourse, elaborate new functions of tradition and modernity, and clarify the ever-evolving nexus of theory and practice in contemporary art towards sovereign ends. She has several published essays and reviews in Inuit Art Quarterly and RACAR: revue d'art canadienne / Canadian Art Review, among others.

Artist Biographies

asinnajaq
Inukjuak, Nunavik and Montreal, Quebec

asinnajaq is an Inuit artist from Inukjuak, Nunavik. Her film, Three Thousand (2017), blends archival footage with animation to imagine her home community of Inukjuak from the past into the future. Three Thousand won Best Experimental film at the 2017 imagiNATIVE media arts festival, and was nominated for Best Short Documentary at the 2018 Canadian Screen Awards. She is a laureate of the REVEAL Indigenous Art Award in 2017 and the Toronto Film Critics Association’s Technicolour Clyde Gilmour Award in 2018. She is one of the curators of Tillitarniit, a three-day festival in Montreal which celebrates Inuit culture. asinnajaq was apart of the curatorial team that worked with Isuma on their representation of Canada at the 2019 Venice Biennial. She is also be on the curatorial team working on the inaugural exhibition of the Inuit Art Center opening in 2020.

Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory
Iqaluit, Nunavut

Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory is an artist that applies her study of uaajeerneq (Greenlandic mask dancing) and understandings of Inuit philosophies into many genres, from performance art and theatre to writing and curatorial work. Co-winner of the 2018 Dora Award for most outstanding play and of the inaugural Kenojuaq Ashevak Memorial Award from the Inuit Art Foundation, Laakkuluk is the first Artistic Director of Qaggiavuut, a nonprofit society in Nunavut supporting Inuit artists and advocating for a Nunavut performing arts centre. Laakkuluk lives in Iqaluit with her husband and three children.

Kablusiak
Mohkinstsis (Calgary), Alberta

Kablusiak is an Inuvialuk artist and curator based in Mohkinstsis and holds a BFA in Drawing from the Alberta University of the Arts. They are represented by Jarvis Hall Gallery, and their work has been acquired by public and private collections across so-called Canada. Kablusiak is a board member of Stride Gallery (2016-present). Awards include the Alberta Foundation for the Arts Young Artist Prize (2017) and the Primary Colours Emerging Artist Award (2018). A multi-disciplinary artist, they imbue a variety of mediums with their trademark ironic humour to address cultural displacement. The light-hearted nature of their practice extends gestures of empathy and solidarity; these interests invite a reconsideration of the perceptions of contemporary Indigeneity. Kablusiak, along with three Inuit curators, will be creating the inaugural exhibition of the new Inuit Art Centre in 2020, and they are shortlisted for the 2019 Sobey Art Award, representing the Prairies and the North.

Carola Grahn
Malmö, Sweden and Kittelfjäll, Sápmi

Carola Grahn is a Sámi visual artist based out Malmö, Sweden and Kittelfjäll in Sápmi. Grahn works primarily with materializations of text, installation strategies and sculptural media. Her affective text- and sound-based sculptural installations lend poetic dialogue to the contexts of place, labour, and identity that are attuned to the slippages of language and representation in art while complicating cultural and gendered social constructions of the North. Carola is an internationally-known artist in northern Scandinavia and abroad, whose work has been shown at Southbank Centre, 2017 (London, UK), Carleton University Art Gallery, 2017 (Ottawa), Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba, 2017 (Brandon), Office of Contemporary Art Norway, 2017, Tråante, 2017 (Nor), Havremagasinet, 2016 (Sweden), Art Centre KulttuuriKauppila, 2016 (Fin), Bildmuseet, Umeå (Swe), 2014, Galleri Jinsuni, Seoul, 2014 (South Korea) amongst other places. Grahn has been the guest editor of Hjärnstorm magazine 2017, she has written for Afterall (2017) and published the conceptual novel Lo & Professorn (2013). Grahn’s work is also represented in the Swedish Art Council’s collection.

Marja Helander
Utsjok and Helsinki, Finland

Marja Helander is a video artist and photographer based in Utsjok and Helsinki, Finland. Her multi-media practice draws from her Sámi and Finnish ancestry. Helander explores themes related to femininity, identity and the tension between traditional Sámi ways of life and modern Finnish society. Her recent work concentrates on post-colonial topics among Sámi including industry and resource extraction in the North with photography and video art that feature the Northern landscape and Sami issues of modernity through a tragicomic lens. Although originally trained as a painter, Helander decided to pursue her interest in photography, graduating from the University of Art and Design in Helsinki in 1999. Since then she has presented works in solo and group exhibitions both in Finland and abroad, with many shows in northern Scandinavia, Canada, South Africa, and Mali. Her video work Dolastallat won the Kent Monkman award at imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in Toronto, 2016. In 2017, Helander was chosen as the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York’s artist-in-residency. Her recent short, Birds in the Earth won Risto Jarva Prize and the Main Prize in the National Competition in the Tampere Film Festival 2018 in Finland. Helander´s works are also included in collections in several Scandinavian museums and in the National Gallery of Canada. Helander has also made a public artwork So Everything Flourishesfor the Sámi Cultural Centre Sajos, in Inari.

Sonya Kelliher-Combs
Nome, Alaska

Sonya Kelliher-Combs is an Iñupiaq and Athabascan artist from the Alaskan community of Nome. Through her mixed media painting and sculpture, Kelliher-Combs offers a chronicle of the ongoing struggle for self-definition and identity in the Alaskan context. Her combination of shared iconography with intensely personal imagery demonstrates the generative power that each vocabulary has over the other. Similarly, her use of synthetic, organic, traditional and modern materials dissolves binaries of Western/Native culture, self/other and man/nature, to examine their interrelationships and interdependence while also questioning accepted notions of beauty. Kelliher-Combs’s work has been shown in numerous individual and group exhibitions, including the national exhibition Changing Hands 2: Art without Reservation and the inaugural Sakahàn quinquennial of Indigenous art at the National Gallery of Canada in 2013. Recent exhibitions include Hide: Skin as Material and Metaphor at the National Museum of American Indian Art in 2010 and the traveling exhibition THIS IS DISPLACEMENT: Native Artists Consider the Relationship Between Land and Identity in 2011.

Joar Nango
Alta and Tromsø, Norway

Joar Nango is a Sámi and Norwegian architect and visual artist, born in Alta, Norway, and who currently lives and works in Tromsø, Norway. His varied practices often involve site-specific performances and structural installations which explore the intersection of architecture and visual art, drawing from both his Sámi heritage and Western culture. Nango is a co-founder of the architecture collective FFB, who create temporary installations in urban settings. He has exhibited in Canada at Western Front (Vancouver, 2014) and Gallery 44 (Toronto, 2016) and internationally at 43SNA, Medellin (Colombia, 2013), and the Norwegian Sculpture Biennale at Vigelandsmuseet (Oslo, Norway, 2013). One of his recent projects was European Everything (2017) at Documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel, an extensive installation and performance which involved collaborations with Sámi and European artists, writers, poets and musicians.

Taqralik Partridge
Kuujjuaq, Nunavik

Taqralik Partridge is an Inuk artist, writer, curator, throatsinger, and spoken word poet. She is originally from Kuujjuaq in Nunavik, although she now splits her time between Canada and Kautokeino in northern Sápmi. Partridge’s writing focuses on both life in the north and on the experiences of Inuit living in the south. Partridge co-founded the Tusarniq festival held in Montreal. Her performance work has been featured on CBC radio one and she has toured with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. Partridge has also worked as Director of Communications for the Avataq Cultural Institute. In 2010, her short story Igloolik won first prize in the Quebec Writing Competition and the same year she was a featured artist onstage at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. In 2018, Partridge was named as a finalist for the CBC Short Story Prize. Partridge is Editor-at-Large for the Inuit Art Quarterly. Her work will be featured as an official selection at the Sydney Biennale in Sydney, Australia in 2020.

Barry Pottle
Rigolet, Nunatsiavut and Ottawa, Ontario

Barry Pottle is an Inuk artist from Nunatsiavut in Labrador (Rigolet), now living in Ottawa, Ontario. He has worked with the Indigenous arts community for many years particularly in the city of Ottawa. Barry has always been interested in photography as a medium of artistic expression and as a way of exploring the world around him. Living in Ottawa, which has the largest urban population of Inuit outside the North, Barry has been able to stay connected to the greater Inuit community. Through the camera’s len, Barry showcases the uniqueness of this community. Whether it is at a cultural gathering, family outings or the solitude of nature that photography allows, he captures the essence of Inuit life in Ottawa. From a regional perspective, living in the Nation’s Capital allows him to travel throughout the valley and beyond to explore and photograph people, places and events, as well as articulate and interrogate the emergent identity of an “urban Inuk.” His projects have included the “Foodland Security”series which highlights the importance of access to country food in urban communities and the “Awareness” series which documents the history of the Eskimo ID tags and the elders who wore them. Mostly self-taught, his work is rooted in photojournalism. His work can be seen in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Canadian Museum of History, and Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada.

Inuuteq Storch
Sisimiut, Greenland and Copenhagen, Denmark

Inuuteq Storch is a Kalaallit visual artist, photographer, musician and author based in Copenhagen, Denmark and Sisimiut, Greenland. Storch received his photography certifications from the International Center of Photography in New York in 2016, and at Fatamorgana in Copenhagen in 2011. The artist’s practice in photography, film, video, music and installation, incorporates archival and contemporary images to comment on colonialism and the present day impacts and realities of modernization on Greenlandic communities. He is the author of Porcelain Souls (2018), a collection of family photos and letters from Greenland in the 1960s, and anticipates a forthcoming publication this December. Storch has participated in several festivals and major international solo and group exhibitions including: Old Films of the New Tale (Sisimiut Culture House, Greenland, 2017) and Run Away For Mother Earth (Katuaq, Nuuk Culture house, 2012). His group shows include Chirts & Cloves (Nuuk Kunst Museum and Sisimiut Culture House, 2018), Notas Al Futuro (Espacio El Pasajero, Bogota, Colombia, 2017), and the Pop Up Archive Exhibition, MANA (New Jersey, 2017).

Couzyn van Heuvelen
Iqaluit, Nunavut and Toronto, Ontario

Couzyn van Heuvelen is an Inuit artist born in Iqaluit but who has lived most of his life in Southern Ontario. His artistic practice blends modern fabrication techniques with Inuit tradition to create “hybrid” objects that explore both cultural tensions and synchronicities. Van Heuvelen holds a BFA from York University and an MFA from NSCAD University. His work has been included in several group exhibitions across Canada. Recently, van Heuvelen created an aluminum qamutiik sculpture at the Southway Inn in Ottawa, Ontario for the Lost Stories Project commemorating the historical significance of the hotel being a landing point for Inuit traveling south for school, employment and medical care. In 2017, van Heuvelen was chosen as the Sheridan College Temporary Contemporary Artist in Residence and the subsequent work, Nitsiit (2017) was featured at Sheridan’s Hazel McCallion Campus in Mississauga.

Allison Akootchook Warden
Kaktovik and Fairbanks, Alaska

Allison Warden is an Iñupiaq interdisciplinary visual and performance artist who raps under the name AKU-MATU. She was born in Fairbanks, Alaska with close ties to Kaktovik, Alaska and is now based in Anchorage. Warden’s practice weaves together Iñupiaq narratives and traditions from the past, present, and imagined futures. She is the creator of one-woman show, “Calling All Polar Bears” which in 2011 was part of a National Performance Network residency. Her most recent work is Unipkaaġusiksuġuvik (the place of the future/ancient) at the Anchorage Museum in Alaska in 2016, featured an extensive performative installation piece in which she was present in the gallery for 390 hours over two months. As AKU-MATU, she performed at the Riddu Riddu Music Festival in 2018 as part of the Inuit Circumpolar Hip-Hop Collaboration. In 2018, Warden was awarded the Rasmuson Individual Artist Fellowship in the new genre category.

Produced and circulated by: Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University
Patron Sponsor: Birch Hill Equity Partners
Supported by: Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Mobilizing Inuit Cultural Heritage), Initiative for Indigenous Futures and Nexus Investments

Onsite Gallery is the flagship professional gallery of OCAD U and an experimental curatorial platform for art, design and new media. Visit our website for upcoming public events. The gallery is located at 199 Richmond St. W, Toronto, ON, M5V 0H4. Telephone: 416-977-6000, ext. 265. Opening hours are: Wednesdays from noon to 8 p.m.; Thursdays and Fridays from noon to 7 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. Free admission.

Onsite Gallery acknowledges that the new gallery construction project is funded in part by the Government of Canada's Canada Cultural Spaces Fund at Canadian Heritage, the City of Toronto through a Section 37 agreement and Aspen Ridge Homes; with gallery furniture by Nienkämper. Onsite Gallery logo by Dean Martin Design.

Image: Marja Helander, Dolastallat (To have a campfire), 2016. Video still. Courtesy of the artist.