Tribal women cross cultural divide sharing art

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The Planet IndigenUs festival, which took place at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre from Aug. 13 to 22, featured plenty of visual arts programming from artists based right across Canada.

Haisla photographer Arthur Renwick's exhibition of black-and-white photo diptychs, Totem Hysteria, paired totem poles from the Northwest Coast with various commercial representations of totems (primarily signs and sandwich boards advertising businesses such as Totem Audio Video, Totem Auto Body, and Totem Super Star Gold Bingo).

Some of the commercial signs are simply offensive, like the Totem Cafe sign, which has cartoonish totem faces aligned on the vertical and a cartoon thunderbird at the top.

But some are trenchant commentaries on much larger issues, like Renwick's photo of the Totem Road street sign, which has a logging truck in the background.

In Images Tell the Stories: Thread Has a Life of Its Own, wall hangings by female Inuit textile artists from Baker Lake, Nunavut, were paired with wall hangings created by tribal, Muslim, and Hindu women artists from the Indian states of Bihar and Jharkhand.

The textiles were created with applique and stitched embroidery-the Inuit worked with wool duffle and felt, while the Indians worked with handspun, hand-woven tussar silk.

The Inuit pieces were mainly about traditional stories and life on the land, with many of the pieces showcasing the dangers the Inuit have always faced living on the cold and stark tundra.

Victoria Mamnguqsualuk's Figures and Birds with Kayak, for instance, illustrates human figures with various expressions of fear, surprise and desperation. Most are holding harpoons, crawling and crouching, trying to defend themselves or to kill things. One figure is being attacked by an eagle. Others, like Irene Avaalaaqiaq's Boy Turning Into a Wheel and Woman in a Fringed Amauti Transforms Into a Bird, were concerned with themes of transformation and escape.

Inuit artists were also represented in the Takuminaqtut: Looking at the Beautiful exhibition. Comprising approximately half of the permanent collection of Nunavut Arctic College, this exhibition featured the work of first- and second-year students in the college's jewelery and metalwork program.

As part of Takuminaqtut, the public had a chance to work one-on-one with Nunavut Arctic College graduate and artist-in-residence Mathew Nuqingaq, who took over Harbourfront Centre's metalwork studio for two days.

"It's been great," Nuqingaq said. "I've met a lot of really great people, and I have some new ideas for my own work."