Since
the late 1940s, in what has been called the contemporary period, the
visual art of Canadian Inuit has taken many new directions -- printmaking,
textile arts, ceramics, and video -- as well as building upon earlier
practices of direct carving. This slide lecture will give an overview
of historical developments, major artists, and regional concerns,
as well as offer some insights into issues -- questions of authenticity,
validity, and identity -- that have had an impact on its creation,
its reception by the southern Canadian and international public, and
its meaning for the North itself.
 |
Kenujuak Ashevak
Animals of Land and Sea, 1991
Stomecut with setncil, ed. 10/50
25 x 30 inches
SLU 93.39 |
Marie Routledge is associate curator of Inuit Art at the National
Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, where she has worked since 1985 when she
was seconded from the federal Department of Indian Affairs and Northern
Development (DIAND) to assist the Gallery with the initiation and
development of its collection of contemporary Inuit art at a time
when its absence was a part of the politics of Inuit art. Since then,
she has overseen the growth of the collection with the help of generous
donations from private supporters and DIAND to more than 1,300 sculptures,
prints, drawings, and textile works, and managed an active program
of temporary and permanent collection exhibitions, including Pudlo:
Thirty Years of Drawing, Images of the Land, and Thoughts of
Birds. Most recently, she organized Carving an Identity: Inuit
Sculpture from the Permanent Collection, conceived to celebrate
the creation of Nunavut and acknowledge a fifty-year benchmark in
the history of this art.
