Angelica Babiera | Arts Editor
Featured image: The AGO invites York’s Professor Anna Hudson and MICH project for an Inuit exhibition debuting in the summer. | Courtesy of AGO
The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) invited York’s very own Anna Hudson professor of Art, and York’s Mobilizing Inuit Cultural Heritage project (MICH) to join a team of curators to work on a new art exhibition for the summer.
The exhibition will celebrate Inuit artwork, and the kind of power it brings when it comes to questioning current social events and the struggles that come with being Inuit.
The AGO also invited Inuit artists, Kenojuak Ashevak and her nephew Timootee (Tim) Pitsiulak, who, according to them, “best represent generations of Inuits that have challenged Canadians to respond to their art and the Inuit worldview in new ways.”
In order to properly translate the artworks of Ashevak and Pitsuilak to the youth and society, the AGO has invited a mix of other Inuit and non-Inuit artists and curators, including Hudson and members of the MICH project.
Hudson is an art historian, curator, and writer, specializing in Canadian art and visual culture.
She was formerly one of the associate curators of Canadian art at the AGO, and now teaches art students about institutional curatorial practice and Canadian art.
Hudson is currently leading the MICH project, which aims to recover, preserve, document, facilitate, and disseminate Inuit culture and creativity. MICH’s team consists of Inuit and non-Inuit heritage—both graduate students and artists alike—to invite people to re-engage Inuit peoples back into the conversation by using contemporary artwork.
“This project means a lot for the Inuit Curatorial Team, put together by MICH in collaboration with the AGO. It means that an Inuit worldview can inform the exhibition curation and programming.
“Having Inuit curators curate Inuit art is long overdue. It also means that my fourth-year art history seminar class, Art of the Arctic (ARTH 4800I), will get a chance to be involved. There’s no better education than real life experience,” says Hudson.
Hudson and MICH are currently working on the exhibition. Hudson discusses their working process: “Right now, we are finalizing the list of works to be included and developing our creative enhancement projects.
“These projects are meant to transform the exhibition space for the visitor, so that when they look at drawings and prints by Ashevak and Pitsiulak, they hear the voices of Inuit people speaking about what it means to live in the Arctic, to be Inuit, and to have a relationship with the land that is lost in cities.
“The importance of culture to live well and the value of consensus for community well-being are lessons for the world to learn from the Inuit.”
The AGO’s initiative to create and curate an Inuit exhibition allows for a better conversation on what it means to be an Inuit, but also the bravery that comes with being creative.
As Hudson says: “The exhibition is going to be about the challenge that Inuit art—and the work of Kenojual Ashevak and Tim Pitisulak—for all of us, Inuit and non-Inuit: to be creative and observant, to take care of ourselves and each other, and to tell good stories!”
