Introduction

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uh welcome everyone it’s great to see you here tonight uh thanks for joining us for this conversation um

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and welcome to the students who are with us as well from history and art history

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my name is shauna mccabe and i’m the director of the art gallery of guelph and i’d like to welcome you all as well as our guest tonight uh attacker nick

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partridge as well as tyrolik duffy um to begin i’d like to offer land

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acknowledgement on behalf of the art gallery of guelph which is hosting this event tonight

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guelph is situated on treaty land that is steeped in rich indigenous history and home to many first nations inuit and

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metis people today we acknowledge that the art gallery of wolf resides on the traditional

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territory of the mississaugas of the credit first nation of the anishinaabeg peoples who are the

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ancestral holders and today the treaty holders of this land we recognize the significance of the

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dish with one spoon covenant to this land and offer our respect to our anishinaabe nishoni and metis neighbors

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as we strive to strengthen our relationships with them we express our gratitude and recognize a

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responsibility for the stewardship of the land on which we live work and create

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and as we’re all gathered virtually today connected and yet physically dispersed it’s also a good moment to

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recognize how the different traditional lands we reside in and move through and form our lives

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and we acknowledge the elders past present and future of these lands with gratitude and respect

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so a few details everyone is muted for this conversation

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and we invite you to use the chat area for questions uh for the for the um artist and curator and we will return to

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the questions after the conversation and we’ll probably um can actually make everyone visible at that point too to

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have more of a dialogue the project that we’re speaking about tonight even though it’s um on view at

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the art gallery of guelph now um actually started probably you know over 40 years ago the art gallery of

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guelph was founded in 1978 and began collecting the work of inuit artists soon after that and today um

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inuit artwork represents about a quarter of our collection um that totally in total has about 10

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000 works and so in the last few years we’ve we’ve really sort of been focusing on the sort

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of sense of responsibility um that we feel to engage in and um you know

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interact and display and share this these collections of work from the north that we hold in public trust

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um but it by involving communities for whom the artworks hold the most relevance and as a result we invite invited dom

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technic um to work with us as an adjunct curator and uh she is in the process of curating

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a large exhibition drawing on the gallery’s collection as well as contemporary artists that will be on

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view this summer um paclik is uh currently director of the nordic lab which is a project of saw

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gallery in ottawa writer and curator she is originally from nunavik and has been

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living previously in norway as well as the united states this project

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this exhibition we’re talking about tonight as well as the other exhibition in the summer builds on previous

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curatorial projects including uh the first inuit curated project that was presented at the art gallery of ontario

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and her role as previous editor at large for inuit quarterly

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the exhibition that we’re focusing on tonight is uh currently at the art gallery guelph um which i mentioned and

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we will reopen to the public on tuesday which means my life

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creates a dialogue between two artists and one of them who is with us tonight

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tara like duffy um is a multi-disciplinary artist and writer who lives and works between coral

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harbor and nunavut and saskatoon saskatchewan and her work uh

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i’m just gonna actually share my screen just briefly here

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so this is uh just a little introduction to carlek’s work um her she’s she’s uh been working in

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everything from jewelry and apparel to graphic works and her creative practice highlights uh

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very distinct inuit experiences referencing inherited traditions that

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include syllabics it’s a language and materials salvage from our home territory of nunavut

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such as vertebrae lean antler and seal skin as well as elements

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of contemporary culture and so works like this for example

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or this and we have more images of her work as well coming up

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uh so she’s been uh with the art gallery of guelph as artists in residence um and

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to produce the and and help develop the work for the exhibition uh in ucla

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um some glimpses of the exhibition here um and we have uh images of the work um

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close up um that follow this um so this actually um you know this

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exhibition actually emerged as part of the collaboration when tachrylic began working with us we

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were actually working on the larger project and this exhibition sort of developed as

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part of that dialogue it also comes out of a personal relationship between tarlek and takalek

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that we’ll talk about shortly so here’s just some views of the

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exhibition just to have some perspective of what it looks like in the space and

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the various elements

Views of the exhibition

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and it’s also uh in particular a response to a single book called pictures out of my life which is an

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illustrated autobiography of the artist pizziella kashuna so just briefly we’ll talk more about

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fizzy luck of course but she was born in 1904 on nottingham island in the hudson

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streets and spent her childhood in several camps on the south baffin coast

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and ultimately she would settle permanently in cape dorset um in the early 60s she was among the first

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in cape dorset to begin drawing and the most prolific so um this is just a glimpse at the book

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um and what it looks like the book itself was published in 1971 and it’s an illustrated autobiography

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and by autobiography obviously she didn’t write it herself but um a woman named dorothy ebers actually did

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interviews um with um pizza luck and that is translated in both english and syllabics

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this is actually the second book to be published in english and syllabics and the first was the bible

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so i know perhaps we can start maybe um i know this is so key to how the

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exhibition developed um but um i know this book played a role for both of you um

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growing up and that was part of what inspired this so um tachylic do you

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want to start talking about the idea for this exhibition and how it evolved

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yes thank you so much shawna such a wonderful introduction uh so my name is takadik partridge as

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shanna said i’m currently in ottawa on unseated anishinaabe algonquin territory

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and such a pleasure to be on here tonight with with you too and with uh everybody

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who’s here to join in on the conversation um

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so i guess i’ll start with where i started working with you shauna was um

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i’ve been doing work with musa gettys which is a fun an art foundation in guelph as well i see that sean’s on the

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call hi sean and as part of that a resident that

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residency i was invited to do by elwood elwood jimmy who was

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the person that i’m working with invited to do something

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around the festival arts everywhere all of the artists in that residence

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were invited to to do some kind of intervention and my intervention was to be um

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an exhibition and shauna you so kindly offered the space at hg

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and we did which was uh at that point the idea about everyday

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photos of everyday life uh taken by enui uh both professional photographers and

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non-professional photographers um and then after that we kept talking and

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you went and got a grant and we’re continuing on the idea of the math

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every day every day um so this exhibition is in that vein as

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well it’s pictures out of its life and then also pictures are out of the duffy’s

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life um when you and i had first talked i had told you that both the two of us were

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very uh moved by this book when we were kids

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and um it’s just like for me it’s just a dream that we were able to pull something

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together with and i was able to go and touch the with gloves

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touch the images that dictula had done with her own hands you know i just

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um i’m so so happy with how it turned out too

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and uh it’s just unfortunate that people can’t go in person but it’s wonderful that you’re

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doing this recording and we reopen next week so very good

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also extended the exhibition so it’ll be up uh through march so

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so how did um so you both grew up with the book uh maybe talk about had you actually spoken about well tarlek your

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work comes out of the same ideas very much about everyday materials

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um had you actually talked about concilius work before and creating work in relationship to it

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um i don’t know if we spoke about specifically creating before this project but i know we’ve spoken about

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the book before um because i do have a habit of going book shopping and book thrifting or buying stuff off

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and i remember finding it again and i had forgotten about it um my mommies have a coffee in the hotel

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they have a hotel uh in coral in nineveh and so it’s for the guests to look at and i remember i would just flip through

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it uh during lunch hours because that’s where we’d spend a lot of our lunches

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so yeah it’s always been touched by it and again i often have conversations about

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absolutely everything and so um

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i was just incredibly honored to have this because when i first started drawing it’s like not that i didn’t take it seriously but you just sort of think

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of it as not not art but just an idea on a paper that i’m trying to get out of my hand

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like draw and click um but obviously very influenced by the inuit artists

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that i have been so fortunate to be influenced by

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just surrounded by i should say since i was a young child and not even really realizing it because a lot of

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times too like i would dismiss some inuit artists just creepy and weird

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um but that’s something that i’ve come to really appreciate um as and as well as just like the

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everyday items that inuit have always drawn how it’s changing and how the items that surround us are changing

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and how some people might not like outside of nunavut or outside of being an inuk everyday life wouldn’t

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necessarily know that this is something that surrounds us every day

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[Music] but what do you think like how i think you know

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i think a long time we hadn’t talked about you doing work in response to lock’s work but

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um we had talked about the book and both loving the book as children i remember

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it was one of um ever since i was very young it was one of the

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books that i just would look at for a long time and of course i didn’t i mean i didn’t

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read the words because they were maybe not as interesting for a little kid but

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just those images are just sort of stuck in my mind you know the enormous mosquitoes like if you look on the cover

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of the book they’re very simply drawn but they’re just it’s so effective as an image

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and just the idea of how people would carry things when they’re traveling

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look you can see that she has the sewn pail or bucket

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probably it’s own out of seal skin all the implements that she’s carrying and she’s even carrying a baby and those

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mosquitoes are attacking and i for me it feels so real like it’s like

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it becomes real in my mind when i think about it that those mosquitoes are that big

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they are they really aren’t that big but just oh i just i could i just imagined all

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kinds of scenarios and then to see that also as a child and be and realize it that realize that it was

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um our fellow enoch who had drawn those and that they were in a book

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and that you know this person was famous for that like they were known in the world

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i feel like it was so valuable to to understand that that this is that

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important that it’s in a book and we actually have

The word talk

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uh not that work but this work very similar very similar you can see

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her ulu is hanging down there by a string too the mosquito’s even trying to bite her feet yeah

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and we had used this as um beside this one um as sort of the intro the intro

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wall just and it’s been kind of interesting you know when we did installation actually we are doing it

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kind of remotely um you know by phone basically tucker like entirely

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uh couldn’t travel at the time so um and then to deciding on what we were going to create you know pairings of and

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relationships between so um this work and this work um just seemed to make a

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lot of sense because of the relationship of you know um you know older and younger

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um and just the different environments i think too like the change and that’s

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what i think i love so much about this this exhibition is just the you know the traditional to contemporary

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environments that get captured also the yellow

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so when we’re trying to figure out the wall color and we sort of noticed that there’s this frequent yellow appearing

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in both metallic and pencil it’s work i love the yellow yeah

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hence the wall so yeah do you want to talk about this word talk

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yeah um it sort of calls back to like uh when i was living back home i lived away

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from home for a long time uh and when i had left i that was i just wanted out i didn’t want to be in

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nunavut anymore i was young 17 18 and i never went back for like i mean i

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visited every year but i didn’t go back back for about 17 years and i had this deep longing

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for home that was uh it’s still in me like i can’t it’s

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like i had spent all that time trying to get away and now i’m trying to spend all my time to go back and uh

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i remember just taking pictures all the time before smartphones i just take pictures of everything

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like pepsi drying in a porch or my mom’s fish heads uh fermenting in

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in a in a like a a pot just anywhere or just kids walking to the co-op like

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everything became beautiful to me everything became something that was precious

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whereas before when i was living there it’s like to me it was like the tv what the things

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that were on the tv is what i felt was more important or more precious or that’s what i wanted i was missing out

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on the world and so those those drawings to like when i would snap those pictures i didn’t always have the best quality

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camera but these moments that i wanted to remember forever in a way that

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maybe wouldn’t deteriorate uh and so those two girls especially i don’t know if that’s a sewer pump or a

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water pump i’m not sure but they’re just having like their popsicles by the quick stop and

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uh just how colorful the clothing is with the young people

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and how it sort of uh is like a call in response to like how colorful it’s your last work is and

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and yeah that’s just it was just this need this this need to document and to

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remember and to to like blow kisses back to nunavut and

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there is beauty and everything there and i think for a longest time you you hear nunavut described as you know not so

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much now but like the barren lands or like why would you live there like why does anyone live there even when i was

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traveling people would often say these things to me but there’s just so much beauty and

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but when i was drawing that picture this is why i need taco in my life because i’m constantly writing myself off or

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constantly thinking something’s not good because i it’s you know you do this comparison to the inuit artists that i

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really admire and that’s like there’s just i just don’t think it’s as cool or as good or

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as like is this some shitty children’s book illustration that i’ve drawn you know you just don’t know and so i really

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appreciate having um uh just a colleague’s belief in me and

Comparing to Inuit artists

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then seeing it installed uh actually made me cry but along with the yellow and to see it along with her work

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in person really seeing it come to life i could see uh

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sort of how they are related or as while i was doing the work it was a little bit more difficult

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to feel confident that my work should be shown alongs or

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could be shown alongside hers

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well and the relationships run like great through it so the you know the child with the dog and the coat and the

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jacket in the hood and then you know in relationship to the children being carried and

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totally it’s like that like with her and all the baggage too like the young woman was smoking the cigarette with the northern bag

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often see walking with the co-op bags or the northern bags

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and the leggings you know things everywhere yeah and you design leggings right

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i do yes it’s been a while since i’ve designed leggings some but yeah i love i love the idea of

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putting art on everything and anything because there’s no real limits to uh

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and this i guess you know and it’s nice to have living billboards of people not so much for advertisement but just

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to see also representation just you could see it um

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inuit syllabics or things that are our culture on our clothes wasn’t something you

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really really saw growing up besides like homemade chocolates with skidoo on them

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[Music] and these there are quite a few uh works by pizzilock in the exhibition um

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do you want to talk about how you selected those yeah i mean i of course going with a

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theme about scenes from everyday life um but also

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a sense of movement a sense of uh i i like work that seems to have like

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a sort of contained singularity i don’t know if that describes it well but like it’s just

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sort of striking one striking thing um so like you can see these are quite

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circular and even you know there’s a lot of stuff going on there there’s a circular kind

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of form to that um a lot of uh diabetics work is like that as well

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um and yeah the movement i just you know i mean

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all of her work is it feels alive anyway but some of them are just so

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um so striking and so vibrant

The Movement

21:29

because we left a lot out yes and it’s like it’s not i mean it’s not unfortunate but it’s it is unfortunate

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that we sound like a giant room but yeah i mean like look at this it’s just so gorgeous

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they’re beautiful i love the perspective like you know that the one on the right with the woman standing on on the rocky

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shore and then you know looking out to uh the people on the kayaks and

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the sea it’s like the perspective is that you know what’s in front of her is sort of flattened

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down to our 2d kind of view and it just it feels enormous to me

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you know you can say you feel the power of the ocean in there’s no it’s not contained by

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like a linear frame [Music]

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um dogs yeah fouled it too like going out boating or

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being on the land and so there are so many similarities to like how i grew up going out camping

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and so you could see like the flashes of uh what her life was what seeming so

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long ago and how much we seem to have lost but how much is still really much alive and very much

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there even while we were growing up like getting water too was one of the things if

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you’re up camping and then that was one of the things something like you go get the water

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or your chili oak to go get the water and you do it with a pot as opposed to like the the implements that chocolate

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was talking about in the cover of the book but that’s something that i had done as a child you know

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go get fresh water for tea or for cooking or washing whatever

Documenting

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and you mentioned you know that um what you are doing is sort of documenting and remembering and i think

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that’s what she was doing as well um documenting for you know so

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we can all remember that sort of a traditional um life right in the north

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yeah and it’s so easy to dismiss uh like even my own memories or even five

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years ago but life has completely changed uh even from a couple of years you know with covet and everyone’s

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isolating and we’re less free to move around and so when i was there i just i did

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have the sense of urgency to you know capture as much as i could take photos or draw or

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like collect bones um oh there’s just a sense of i don’t know how long this is going to last and and

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maybe i did develop an appreciation for the culture as it is now

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and obviously i just find everything about inuit just beautiful

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and the children everywhere and just the freedom that is in like our communities that’s totally different than than a

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city vibe you know and the landmarks

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you know and i can stand like how prolific she is i i had a sense of that when i began

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drawing for this exhibition it’s like the ideas keep coming and you want to do more and more

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and more and more and then you realize you’ve had too many now or like i still have so many drawings that

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i want to do or that aren’t finished yet along the same vein but i do really appreciate you

24:52

both for the invitation because i didn’t really see myself in this like this this these

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kinds of drawings but it’s really something that i’ve fallen in love with

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like i wasn’t sure i could could draw kids as opposed to like a pop can

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i know and so one of the things that was interesting is that you do sort of work in these like almost you know three

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different forms at the same time so digital drawing pencil crayon drawing just pencil

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drawing actually four um and then prints prints from digital drawings and other drawings so do you

25:29

want to just talk about kind of the fluidity of how you you’re working yeah i think uh the pencil just how i

25:36

sort of get the idea down and i feel good and then i want to bring it to life more with color

25:42

but then i do get afraid of ruining the piece or not being able to come back from it if i’ve decided to color

25:49

something and i change my mind like i can become a little bit uh of an anxious type as opposed i wish i could just be

25:54

freer but i think that’s where i i find comfort in digital where i can just go

26:00

and play and then if i do want to pull back i can but i’m glad that

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would really encourage me like she said no i want like your drawings your hands at paper whereas that felt a little naked to me

26:13

when i was used to sort of going into the digital realm or into the

Personal Prints

26:20

print realm but i really do find the beauty and the power and like the hand to page or the

26:25

hand to paper um but i would like to get into like silk screen printing now too for instead

26:31

of like the digital prints maybe going out and and silk screening it down uh to kind of get the effect that i get

26:39

from digital printing but yeah are really personal

26:45

you want to talk a little bit about those which ones let me see oh yes yes yes oh

26:53

my mom happiest times in our home which can be kind of a grumpy house sometimes it’s

26:59

when my mom has the accord you know it’s just happy fun time she’s in great good mood she’ll

27:06

pull out her purple accordion and my son will dance and she just sits

27:12

in her chair that that’s her chair or you know she’s always on the phone either with her friends or

27:17

counseling people because she works as a pastor but yeah i just love just she normally

27:23

won’t smile if i want to take her picture but if she’s her instrument she’ll smile

27:28

so to me that was a very very precious drawing to my mom and then the drawing

27:34

next to it is actually my anarchist accordion and she would play often too at

27:40

community hall or and i actually didn’t remember what her recording looked like but i was

27:45

visiting my uncle one day for lunch and i noticed that the panther and i love black panthers

27:52

are one of my favorite animals as well and i was wondering i thought it was just the most beautiful accordion and my aunts have told me it was my honor chels

27:59

so i quickly just had snapped a picture and i wanted to make a print out of it too for like a crew neck print

28:06

um and yeah these are just things to like somehow uh what’s the word um

28:13

not a time capsule i’m but you know is uh immortalized is not the right word but in in a way uh keep it from eroding

28:20

or my little my way of um remembering something forever and it’s

28:26

not even on purpose i guess you just sort of i wouldn’t have even thought of the two together which is ridiculous because it

28:32

seems yes but just the music with accordions

28:38

that’s in my family line yeah and i know so looking at you know

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like the the coke cans and the um the you you sort of in the past have done

28:52

dealt with sort of these single objects as well and then so like going from like objects to these scenes right because

28:59

these like these you know um individuals like like her playing and we have more

29:05

of those um this is uh yeah it gives you a bit more of the background i suppose or the

The Scarf

29:10

context of the piece i was actually you had posted the photograph that the one on the right is

29:16

based on and i went to your facebook to see if i could find it but i couldn’t find it

29:22

but the scarf yes yeah

29:27

yeah she’s so she’s so i love uh she’s actually just recently passed away but one of my most favorite cherished elders

29:33

and um i would always take pictures always i still do to this day and uh i remember where her cabin and i asked if she would

29:40

put on my click scarf you know and then i’d actually asked her she wanted that one or the pepsi when she wanted the pepsi one or the peepsy one

29:47

but i snapped the picture of her with the click and uh my mom was apologizing for me saying oh you know my daughter’s

29:53

was taking pictures and then the lady was just like um um so the cook was just like um

30:00

which i know her which was so warm because she was just like basically giving me permission to take as many

30:05

pictures as i wanted and and be welcome because sometimes like i’ve suffered a lot of scorn taking

30:11

pictures before social media made things a little bit more acceptable

30:17

but i would sneak photos of uh like meat on cardboard or are eating because it was

30:24

something that we weren’t we were told not to do and he wouldn’t do because there was still a level of shame

30:30

involved like would tell me to warn her if i was ever going to come over with a kaduna or

30:36

non-inuk person so that’s how i grew up and so i’ve seen the change from

30:43

you know a little bit of shame to like complete celebration which is wonderful but yeah i’ve

30:48

definitely lived in a time where sometimes still you know if you’re taking photos people can get a little

30:54

uncomfortable but i’ll do it but yeah that’s at her cabin my favorite

31:02

place to be where there’s no english spoken and [Music] you just sit and drink tea and eat pile

31:09

of biscuits or palawa and simon sigzia

31:15

one of the best things that could ever happen as a child where it feels like nothing ever happens in your whole community is like a concert

31:24

yeah a bunch of people fly in it’s like the most exciting [Music] like better than any concert i think

31:30

they’ve gone to even as an adult when was this actually

31:36

uh rankin inlet i think that would have been that was from a picture i can’t remember specifically what

31:42

concert but there was one time i was visiting family in rankin and i know there’s like a cbc

31:47

thing but and my mom would let me stay out a little bit later at the hall as long as the music and everything was

31:53

going on i was allowed to be out which was very rare and everyone’s stomping and kids are

31:59

running around i don’t know one of the some of the best memories and he’s totally like

32:05

a real rock star a famous you know very famous to this day if he if i place

32:13

music on youtube i actually start stomping

32:19

carried away and these are a couple of the the prints

32:24

from digital drawings yes yes yes you can see sort of the different consistency of the drawing

32:30

because of that um it’s interesting looking at like her drawing of water here and your

32:37

you know how you how you create the wall color on the background here very similar

32:45

i do yeah i love the detail of pattern

32:50

yeah i like the contrasting things that like i said the things that i probably wouldn’t have found beautiful or even noticed growing up at this as year old

32:56

you just sort of just the plywood and along with like the rusted stove or

33:03

you know a simon he’s easy to make look cool because he was just cool a cool guy with rubber boots with like

33:08

the company not coming back what is that i can’t remember that inside part the duffel sock part of the coming uh we say

33:19

in rankin right i was i’m a little bit second guessing myself but i just think that’s

33:24

another thing that i would love to just draw singularly as a rubber boot with the

33:30

the duffel sock [Music] see

The Pattern

33:35

so here’s some of pixie luck just the pattern on hers as well

33:41

drawings etchings on paper yeah i really like i love that

33:47

you know the black and white it shows it makes you look at the details more closely i think

33:54

um we we were in the collection last week um tachylic and gail cabluna and i and

34:01

we were you know a number of artists uh sort of take this approach to drawing the the dress in the um

34:08

with the lines the vertical and horizontal lines this appears quite frequently in color and in black and

34:13

white um with other artists as well

34:18

and yeah i think the like the black and white contrast or the contrast between darker and lighter

34:24

shades of things it’s very you know like that’s something that i do in my own work and

34:31

i’ve seen and especially in clothing gail and i were actually talking about

34:36

um her tapestry that she’s working on that uh

34:42

sort of in relation to her grandmother’s tapestries and how the work on the edging of her grandmother’s tapestries

34:48

is that contrast i think it really goes to uh

34:54

clothing used to always be made out of animal skins which are just various shades of browns and blacks and whites

35:01

so what people had to work with was the contrast in in darkness and lightness

35:09

and it’s just really striking and sorry go ahead no it’d be well you and i have talked

35:17

about this before like remember that black and white jumper that we were looking at a picture

35:24

of i think it’s right now in the 1950s or something

35:30

it’s just a contrast to in the geometric shapes or at least when they’re working with just like the white classic along

35:35

with the gray and it’s like this beautiful soft gradient and as soon as we had our chance to work with colors

35:41

it’s like you see like the hudson bay lines kind of on jackets and i like the

35:46

simplicity of that kind of contrast and i think it’s sort of the same as like

35:51

the old advertisements like pilot biscuits being like white and green with a little splash of red here or like

35:58

even the china lily with the black and the yellow uh and i do love black and white that’s

36:04

why like i’m very much a black and white kind of person too like with the syllabus leggings i had first designed

36:10

like and i see that in a colleague’s heart beads that she beaded hearts that she had just completed that i wanted to

36:17

buy and they’ve already sold but you know red and then the black and the white this is something beautiful about

36:23

to make more i’m just mad about it

36:31

yeah but there’s something so beautiful and timeless about i think black and white and okay i need to make this

36:38

[Laughter] i like the boldness of when you choose

36:43

color too because sometimes i question my my color choices

36:50

the image on the right is the only image that we have from the book actually so

36:55

um you know that’s how prolific she is she we actually have so many of her works and none from the book except for

37:01

one so um amazing the only overlap

37:08

let’s see here some more i love these ones

37:17

i love the black and yeah just the drawing straight drawing which is what inspired me to do like the eye chart

37:22

pencil because i have to like to ink it but definitely inspired by uh

37:30

just something beautiful about just the lines i guess but

37:35

her work is just amazing i could look at it forever look how strong she must be there’s two

37:42

caribou heads in her backpack

37:47

and her queen make almost looks like a nano but it’s not

37:53

i love it it’s like a war too we played that like

37:59

so it’s you know it’s such a typical game for any

38:04

occasion christmas games or easter games or canada day or whatever

38:10

and like everybody can join in yeah it’s adults

38:17

have you ever did you ever win did you ever go one-on-one with anybody

38:23

no but it’s like it’s amazing that if when it just

38:30

suddenly goes and then the one side is the loser yeah it’s just

38:36

it’s weird it’s funny because laughing because it’s sort of like a yeah

38:43

making me homesick of the um things we’ve been working on for the upcoming exhibition that

38:49

teclavic is looking at is um you know just these sort of aspects of everyday life so you know

38:55

play and recreation is kind of one of those and you know sustenance and hunting and

39:01

um we’ve been kind of like building out these categories as a way of organizing the work

39:06

in the collection yeah we were talking

39:12

a bit about like you know the story said something about um

39:19

addressing the kind of history of how indigenous work has been shown

39:26

in institutions yeah for me like and there’s also this question about

39:32

well are things that are being presented um kind of ethnographic and just kind of

39:38

show and tell or are they are they something else and for me it’s like it’s about a celebration of the

39:45

things that are important to energy and um

39:50

wanting to show things that i think other inuit would be interested in seeing

39:57

hopefully in person if it can happen but also you know having documented or having uh

40:04

you know for discussion um showing the things that

40:10

i feel resonate with my community members and

40:16

for me it’s so um you know the every day is so

40:22

important um to celebrate in indigenous communities in inuit

40:28

communities like the the the small beautiful things or the things

40:34

that are not considered to be beautiful but that are of importance to our everyday lives

40:40

i want to celebrate those things because it’s really just amazing that we exist

40:47

if you look at these old illustrations of how people

40:52

lived and how they survived and then now you know i’m celebrating those and

40:57

then also celebrating those things those moments like the public was saying like she wanted to document them and she felt

41:03

that they were so important to document like a lot of those moments it’s like they

41:08

would just be thrown away and they’re not seen to be important they’re not fancy but um

41:14

for me they’re real treasures that’s what it’s so important uh or like

41:23

even the carnation milk which uh when i finished it was one of my prouder

41:28

moments to one of my one of the girls that would bully me growing up but we’re friends now

41:34

thing that was she really loved it and how you know she like it’s a strange thing but it’s one of

41:40

like i grew up my dad would put in our bottles and we ate it in our cereal mixed with water and

41:47

it almost feels like i’ve grown up in an older time than i actually grew up with like shelf milk or carnation or

41:54

things like this that you might not think are precious but i would call like mother’s milk and it’s on every counter

Carnation Milk

42:01

and nunu at almost every table every fridge and it’s something that would connect you even to a very mean

42:07

childhood bully [Laughter] but that we could both appreciate this

42:13

drawing um and it is something beautiful

42:18

and strange because it’s uh introduced to us um obviously by colonialism and

42:25

uh the huddler not coming in and giving us sugar and flour and

42:30

stealth milk [Music] it’s like something that people say it’s not really good but then you grew up

42:37

with it and that’s good to you you’re used to it it’s like a comforter i think i have

42:42

a can of carnation like could you know if i can now i could pilot biscuits i can you can yeah yeah

42:49

i remember like click i don’t know i actually have clicked now because i don’t know if i’d eat it but i remember growing up camping uh

42:56

and if my uncle gabriel was frying it up on a frying pan over the coleman stove and

43:01

i would literally salivate because it was just like the most delicious smell just

43:08

that you could ever imagine especially if you’re out camping and not a lot of food and your grub box is getting low

43:13

and you’re out of the junk that you brought from the northern or the co-op everything tastes amazing when you’re

43:20

camping it’s so true even if it’s fried with a few mosquitoes in there

43:28

yeah so this these are just great these are these are

43:34

the little well this is 20 21 these are um previous exhibition though

43:39

yeah really i think you were sort of looking at kind of pop pop art sort of pop culture

43:46

yes which i still want to keep continuing on and uh like there’s so many different things i

43:53

want to draw that i mean i actually have drawn but i just haven’t finished yet

43:58

but this is for the same thing sort of just everything that was on my grandmother’s table or things that were always around us or things that are on

44:03

the shelves at the northern that have always been there and they have they’re beautiful in their own way because i’m

44:09

i do appreciate marketing and i like the simplicity of uh contrasting colors that aren’t too complicated

44:16

and china lily is the best i remember the very first time i had like sushi soy sauce i had only ever had

44:23

chanally which is very strong very salty right so the very first time i had sort of the kikkoman is it

44:29

it’s more popular in nunavik i think i was told i don’t know but i think since the sushi craze

44:36

ah i feel like long after japan has moved on from sushi will still be making

44:42

a thousand years from now that’s funny well there’s something

44:48

about like uh takariki mentioned that you know that i the idea i had had about

44:54

you know sort of like looking at how we present genuine art and and you know all of that i actually

45:00

think i got those ideas from you or at least your the way you would articulated something had kind of captured my mind

45:07

because that was probably what i was thinking as well but you had written some um in relationship to another

45:14

project um you know really looking at sort of the whole tradition of owning keeping

45:19

showing um and not showing of indigenous objects right that sort of whole history of of um you know not only

45:28

um display but then how um the the way the labels are written um to the way they’re presented right so

45:34

um that really interested me because um you know like just thinking about inuit

45:40

collections and how they are typically presented it’s it’s by nature and because they’re in museums they’re

45:47

out of context and so um what it has been really amazing is to see sort of like you know these

45:53

exhibitions are coming out of relationships so you know your friendship with terelik um also um gail

46:00

cabuna who we mentioned um is uh you know the great granddaughter of jesse monarch um and has you know comes out of

46:08

a lineage of artists who she is able to sort of see in our collection and create work in response to and that is a way i

46:15

think of like you know thinking differently about exhibition right the content itself is different and how

46:21

we then talk about it is different so that every day i think is the key you know like to me it’s like aha

46:28

this light bulb went off when we did that first project but you know like through the photographs and just

46:34

thinking like oh there’s so much more uh to look at here in terms of its potential um you know

46:41

and and really important for us so i i really appreciate it sort of you know how this is evolving and the

46:46

conversations that we’re able to have with the collection and and um contemporary artists

46:53

and bringing those things together is really critical i actually think like the exhibition is not

47:00

if not it’s not that it’s not the most important thing but it is not the only

Inuit Access

47:06

important thing in dealing with um you know inuit and co and collections

47:14

um like my aim is really to have more inuit access especially older works or

47:22

new works as well um you know their relatives their community

47:27

members like i want like my personal project you see me posting on facebook and stuff is to find especially because

47:34

i know all the names in nunavik you can hear the dog screaming in the back sorry about that um

47:41

defined works by uh late family members and to

47:46

at least let family members know where those works are you know in switzerland they’re in the states they’re wherever

47:53

um but also sometimes to have some of those works come back to

47:59

two families or to bring like gail bringing gail i mean i’m not alone in this so you know a

48:05

lot of indigenous curators are doing this bringing family members or especially you know

48:12

they’re artists but even if they’re not artists to come and spend time with these objects that are

48:17

made by their late family members or they’re still living family members but they don’t have any

48:23

other way to access like i think that’s one of the things that our institutions

48:29

can continue to do and continue to build on you know like there’s all different ways

48:34

that that um this heritage this these things that are are part of us

48:41

they’re like i’ve heard you know tanya luke and linklater describe them as our relatives like they are actually

48:48

kind of living things um that are part of our culture like there’s many ways that we can

48:54

approach um to kind of heal the risk that is between

49:00

these this cultural uh heritage and and inuit today

49:07

excellent we’re so bombarded like we grew up so bombarded by like uh hundred culture outside culture mtv culture when

49:14

i was growing up you know much music all these things that seem to hold more value only because they’re like flashed in front of

49:21

us so much more and so much more aggressively and then the things that were most precious to us taken away

49:29

and stored away from and so to i’ve written um

49:34

extended art labels for uh the national gallery before too and i’m just the privilege of being able to look at our

49:41

look at like takalek was saying being able to go to guelph and just being in the presence

49:47

of basically they’re like uh gifts to us as inuit you know they’re

49:54

things that are they’re talking to us in a way that maybe would speak differently to someone who’s not enough or not from

50:01

the culture and things that were lost or seemingly lost seemingly stolen

50:06

seemingly taken away and we need to young people need to see it you know

50:12

people need to have it on their tv screens or in their libraries or somehow

50:18

more accessible like a book says it’s like if there are relations and that

50:23

that connection needs to be strong and easily accessible

50:29

like me calling for any little thing that i

50:35

am going through or anything that annoys me i think

50:40

the thing i felt growing up is you you really did feel like things were lost or there wasn’t as much that uh you could

50:47

have access to it just wasn’t there or i thought it wasn’t there but there is so much it’s with such a richness of culture

50:52

and so many of our artists are so prolific and and what they created and so many of those pieces are just sitting

50:59

away in galleries and thankfully for that because they’ve been preserved and they’ve been kept

51:04

but to be able to have inuit or indigenous creators curators uh

51:11

start getting their hands on that and somehow creating this new movement where art

51:18

maybe moves more north a little bit would be amazing

51:24

absolutely we got to get all the art out of the

51:30

usas that’s a little twilight motif i don’t remember which uh gallery it’s in or

51:36

somewhere but i would love i don’t want to go to the states for nothing right now

Dialogue

51:47

any well yeah other just to see i’m like seeing gail with her relatives work you

51:54

know and also i mean it

51:59

it also makes a really big difference to have like i’m really it’s really wonderful to work with the staff at the

52:05

art gallery of guelph you know like really welcoming um

52:10

and um not high stress

52:18

that’s a very inequality so um you know and then in the middle of the

52:24

pandemic and of course like it it actually works good because then there’s nobody there and then gail had all this

52:29

space to look at this stuff like i think um it just felt like it was meant to be

52:35

well so much of it is actually dialogue as well there was one point where you know she was working on you know looking

52:42

at work related to her family but then came to the vault because she said i just want to be here for the dialogue i

52:47

just want to be here for the conversation because to hear like you know because you know the

52:53

knowledge about the pieces comes out in conversation yeah and that’s how we sort of identify what

53:00

will be in the summer exhibition um and then start to build the relationships between you know that work

53:06

and contemporary artists so so terelik will actually be um in that summer exhibition as well so

53:13

um creating new work which is great thank you so much thank you for that opportunity so because sometimes i think

53:19

i need a little push like i’m always reading and making but uh sometimes as an artist when we’re just

53:25

trying to survive you know making earrings or jewelry or whatever following the hustle uh it’s nice to have opportunities to

53:33

to be inspired and to make stuff i love making things

53:39

and so we won’t tell what you’re making believe that it’s surprised

53:44

we won’t reveal that so because it’ll be it’s it’s an amazing element of the exhibition so

53:51

someone else will probably just kidding if we said no no no no no no no no

53:56

no that we’ve had the conversation that you’re gonna make this thing so if somebody comes along with the idea and does something else

54:02

it’s it’s it’s called convergent evolution those things happen at the same time but

54:08

they’re not necessarily connected no very true that urgency is important i feel like

54:15

too because otherwise we wouldn’t move maybe or we wouldn’t hands

54:22

it it makes decisions happen more quickly

54:27

so does anybody have any questions uh they want to ask let me just

54:34

chat here

54:39

let’s see

54:45

i’m just going to go through and actually move everybody into

54:53

we can see you all

55:00

oh yeah this drawing too ain’t a fool

55:06

i love it oh yeah it’s like something bo would draw i feel like blue insect he’s really into insects

55:13

right now

55:23

some people are let’s see it’s working i just have to do it a few

55:29

times for some people i’m not sure why

55:37

i was talking about circular i love circles too this geometry thing anyway very much i

55:42

love that one drawn to circles and i think because also because the

55:48

ingenuity of inuit i think they understand like it’s not i don’t say sacred geometry but just like the

55:53

strength of geometry in our design i think it’s evidence in the drawings as

55:58

well as uh clothing that is sown or kamuti you know all these things

56:06

i’m going to stop sharing now let’s see

Favorite Piece

56:12

does anybody have any questions you should be able to raise your hands and talk you know

56:17

or put them in the chat

56:32

no questions no questions

56:41

i’ll ask you a question what is your favorite piece in the whole show

56:48

um favorite piece of yours yeah one of each let’s do

56:54

uh your mom oh my mom

56:59

i love it i love all the busyness of it yeah

57:06

and you really capture her beautiful face um

57:15

uh oh boy it’s so hard to pick i know that’s a mean question

57:24

could be that when could be that one with the with the water

57:29

there’s nothing that’s kind of stretched out with the

57:35

um the mosquitoes and carrying i think still as indigenous

57:40

women too we still have that sense of caring like i’ve walked many a mile i

57:46

would never compare myself to our ancestors and what they went through but you know even just walking home in

57:51

the freezing cold with northern banks that’s still my favorite piece i think

57:57

yeah well you uh you searched far and wide to get a picture of a northern bank for

58:02

reference i have bucks for it that’s where that’s where

58:08

the residency and money went because there was so much research

58:14

very important very important that detail is important

58:21

i just i i you know as someone who kind of comes from a background um in you know very interested in landscape but

58:27

landscape in a really broad sense so things like the arcade and the quick stop and oh yeah you know every site

58:33

just like you know the northern store i just love that so um

58:38

you know it’s uh it’s i think it’s so important to capture those sort of like you know those everyday landscapes so

58:46

oh i love that i like i like that and then i’ll do like the tisha or like hollywood undead all these like strange

58:52

graffitis that just randomly something you that ends up being something you read and see every single day

58:58

yeah yeah and what becomes part of that you know your inner dialogue is walk through these landscapes and our

59:05

everlasting coral there’s been so many arcades i remember just loving it as a kid and then things are so temporary and

59:11

coral it seems like the fun things never seem to last very long

59:16

mm-hmm are unsustainable yeah yeah

59:22

so kai says he has no questions i just want to say i really enjoyed the presentation and loved the work you

59:27

shared with us today sean says thanks very much tayleek and sean i look forward to seeing the

59:33

exhibition next week and for coming all of you

59:40

and you have a question hello thanks thanks for this presentation very interesting to

59:46

hear the um the dialogue among among the three of you um thai lake i was looking looking up

59:53

online your your short bio and there’s a line in there i wonder if you might

59:59

speak to this just briefly it says here that um your work appeals to a wide range of customers

1:00:06

north and south especially those that appreciate her model of quote ethically

1:00:12

harvesting her materials what um what’s embodied in that line

1:00:17

oh my goodness i think a little i would jokingly sometimes say because you know there’s this whole

1:00:23

movement of like you know people who are vegan or really

1:00:29

conscious about the treatments treatment of animals and i grew up quite sensitive to

1:00:36

um animals as well which i was actually vegetarian for a long time i was very confused identity

1:00:42

kid you seen but um i would joke that i had sourced antlers sometimes that was naturally dropped so i’d say those were

1:00:48

my vegan pieces and

1:00:54

i’ve collected bones uh most of the beluga bones have been hunted and harvested for for eating and so they

1:01:01

they have been killed you know by inuit or we don’t say kill in uh you know what we say catch

1:01:08

uh because i think inuit’s idea of uh eating and our relationship to animals

1:01:14

is completely different um than uh let’s say modern people who are very

1:01:21

disconnected from the meat but there are some natural deaths so i say ethically it’s kind of uh i don’t know who wrote

1:01:28

that but i have used the word ethical and i don’t know if i like it or not because

1:01:33

i feel like it implies that there could be an unethical way of doing it but when i first stumbled upon the

1:01:39

carcasses i was just salvaging what i felt like was otherwise just rotting on the beach

1:01:46

and i could really feel the presence and the life force of the animal that was there

1:01:52

and you could just the feeling that that had already fed

1:01:58

like my community and those joyous uh feasting that happens with it and then i

1:02:04

was going to this rotting rotting gross uh carcass

1:02:09

and then sometimes when i would like knock over whatever was in the way and then there’d be like maggots and then

1:02:15

like little birdies would come and start eating uh those gross girls

1:02:23

i don’t know i think that’s i don’t know if i’m making any sense but to me i think uh

1:02:28

there was this idea of not wasting and to use what’s there and i don’t like

1:02:34

to see animal parts in the garbage uh because we do say we use every part but that’s not true so much

1:02:41

uh of everyone and it’s not so true of our modern life uh because we have the luxury of wasting now whereas before we

1:02:49

didn’t and so in my work i think people have been drawn to that and are drawn to the

1:02:54

fact that they know that it’s me going salvaging the pieces and you know i’ve

1:03:00

taken caribou heads out of the dump it’s more romantic to think of me on the

1:03:05

beach with the rotting carcasses but i’ve also taken animal parts out of the garbage or just on the

1:03:12

road if a dog’s dragged it out of somewhere like anything that’s a very enough thing

1:03:17

is to just to take something that might otherwise just be thrown away or not used and to just turn it into something

1:03:23

beautiful or useful so i don’t know if that answers your question but i try to be as

1:03:30

ethical as i can be but i can be a very unethical person [Laughter]

1:03:37

i notice that you have um in since you haven’t been able to go north or travel

1:03:42

during the pandemic at some points you were actually having asking people to send you things right trying to source

1:03:47

more materials yeah yeah it’s it’s actually very hard because uh like uh where i go get the

1:03:54

bones it’s hard to find them first of all and it’s a little bit it could be dangerous because there’s polar bears

1:03:59

and then just to get someone that would actually do it and then bring it to my mom’s and then you know my dad will mail

1:04:05

it to me and one thing i loved about home too is mostly i would gather my own pieces but

1:04:10

it was nice when people come to the door too and they’re like hey do you want to buy this walrus stick for like 60 bucks or

1:04:16

like whatever and i was like yes or like sometimes they just leave it there sometimes there’s like a trade that goes on but uh

1:04:23

it’s it’s helpful to everyone because it’s like things that maybe

1:04:29

they wouldn’t use or would end up going in the garbage something that’s valuable to me some turn into something

1:04:36

um but i really do feel like it’s an honor to that especially you cannot welcome the bones or something very

1:04:41

magical about what happened with me and finding the bones because it was definitely not

1:04:47

something that i thought would become such a big thing it’s just something i really loved to do and i wanted to do

1:04:55

and it’s i wish you could all come with me

1:05:01

you want to talk about the piece you made for the remy oh yes [Music]

1:05:06

i was invited to that it’s a group exhibition uh chicken which means at the same time

1:05:12

uh and i thought about this for a while but i’d like baleen as well from

1:05:19

i had got some source from a local hunter and then i had a couple of pieces that my mom had

1:05:24

saved from a hunt and uh bowhead whale hunting was prohibited in inuit for

1:05:31

uh i don’t actually know how many years but i do know that it was 65 years between the time my grandpa had last

1:05:37

eaten bowhead to the time that he hunted the boy for the first time and he had caught

1:05:43

a big huge forehead in coral would have been in the 90s late 90s and my mom had saved me a piece and i

1:05:49

always wanted to do something special with that um i’d use the other balance or jewelry or whatever but that particular piece i

1:05:56

made into a corset and part of the reason why

1:06:02

foreign whalers were hunting bowhead so much as for the oil and everything but also they were using the valine for corsets

1:06:09

for european women to look smaller and and make their bodies smaller and

1:06:15

inadvertently they were making inuit bodies smaller because they had taken away our food source

1:06:21

and so um as i said again our relation to food is so different or was so different

1:06:27

um in in that way and so it was sort of this

1:06:32

conversation piece to try to say a lot in in in a way

1:06:39

and honor that piece of baleen from my grandpa’s hunt and just imagine not being able to eat

1:06:46

your favorite food because an outside source had come and just completely almost wiped out an entire population it

1:06:52

would never have happened if inuit have done that but yeah that’s at the raymond it’s uh shown alongside

1:06:58

with a huge piece because bailing is so big it could be up to like 10 feet it’s like so massive

1:07:04

and so just to end it just take this big massive whale and try to make a little skinny waist that was kind of a funny

1:07:11

thing to do to a big whale’s baleen is it right now

1:07:17

yeah uh yeah until march as well i’m not actually sure how long but it’s up right now

1:07:25

i’ll have to take a look online and find an image yeah and you also have a show coming up that

1:07:31

saw oh i’m so excited about that

1:07:38

i’m very excited about the show coming up in sauce like my i feel like that’s sort of in my ballpark not that this one

1:07:44

wasn’t but like it’s the pop art it’s gonna be all these images of uh

1:07:49

you know like the pop cans how i want uh and i want to do things like on a really large scale sort of the idea too like

1:07:56

these big large animals that we were surrounded by two maybe big huge pop cans and china lily

1:08:04

and hp sauce in in the way that i play around with syllabics and

1:08:09

i like to imagine a world where what if we did see syllabics everywhere or things were always written in inuktitut

1:08:15

or inappropriate was the dominant language and how that would have changed things for us growing up in our

1:08:22

worldview it’s going to be so fun anyway futurism

1:08:28

yeah alternatively i’m also very capitalist right because like it’s in our it’s in my blood i got

1:08:34

hudson bay blood they colonized my great-grandmother’s womb

1:08:39

and so i feel like you can’t there’s a certain you can’t escape this this idea of like

1:08:46

china lily running through my veins and

1:08:52

carnation milk i’m made of carnation milk i’m silly but yeah i’m very i’m very

1:08:59

excited about that show and i’m very excited that you you guys invited me to do the show i feel like it opened up

1:09:05

another side of my thinking in my brain it’s your tour of ontario

1:09:14

i can’t go anywhere in zoom all the time yeah well thanks so much i think um we can

1:09:21

wrap up um thank you tachylic and thank you charlie um for the incredible conversation and

1:09:27

um uh thank you all for joining us um do visit the exhibition uh it will reopen

1:09:34

we will reopen on tuesday we’re open noon to five um tuesday to sundays

1:09:40

and um uh we hope you’ll all see that exhibition as well as the one that tech critic will curate for the summer that

1:09:47

will open in a few months yes and shawn says see you at our arts

1:09:53

everywhere tomorrow morning yes i feel like has another panel at 9am so we’ll let you thank you so much

1:10:02

thank you all uh have a good evening and take care and we’ll see you all again soon bye to me

1:10:08

good night good night everyone

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