Book/exhibit tell of Inuit weavers

Page 17

Nuvisavik -the place where we weave

Edited by Maria Von Finckenstein

Canadian Museum of Civilization/

McGill-Queen's University Press

202 pages (sc) $45.00

For more than three decades, artists and weavers in Pangnirtung on Baffin Island have been working together to create colorful tapestries that capture images of traditional Inuit life, preserving them for future generations. Now the images of those tapestries have been captured in a book.

Nuvisavik-the place where we weave, features a history of the Pangnirtung Tapestry Studio, where the weavers of the community learned and perfected their craft, along with reproductions of some of the tapestries created at the studio since it first opened its doors.

Each tapestry represents a team effort, with a member of the community first creating a drawing. Once the drawing is complete, the weaver takes over and translates the drawing into a tapestry.

The book also includes information about the artists-the creators of both the drawings and the tapestries-alongside images of the works they've created.

The 49 tapestries featured in the book are currently on display at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in the exhibit Nuvisavik, The Place Where We Weave: Inuit Tapestries from Arctic Canada. The exhibit opened in February, and will run until Sept. 8, 2003.

The Pangnirtung Tapestry Studio was created in 1970 by the federal government. Throughout the 1960s the Inuit were a people in transition, being forced to leave behind their nomadic life as hunters. They went from living on the land to living in settlements like Pangnirtung. In an attempt to make the change easier, the government started up arts and crafts projects in the new communities. Donald Stuart, an artist-weaver, was asked to go to Pangnirtung to teach the women to weave.

The women of the community were quick to learn the craft, building on their skills in sewing that had been taught them by their mothers.

The women began by weaving sashes, blankets, scarves and parka braids, but as their talents grew, they began to weave tapestries, translating drawings done by local artists into woven works of art.

Thirty years later, members of the studio are still creating tapestries, and selling their creations across Canada and in the United States.

As the book explains, the drawings on which many of the tapestries were based were created by people representing three different generations-Elders who spent most of their lives living in hunting camps; the transitional generation, those who were born in the camps and grew up there, but who moved into Pangnirtung in their twenties; and the younger generation, who have never known camp life.

The overall theme of the work remains the same from one generation to the next, the depiction of traditional Inuit life; life before settlement. But the way each generation of artists represents that life is different.

As Maria Von Finckenstein, curator for contemporary Inuit art at the Canadian Museum of Civilization explained, the drawings done by Elders are usually line drawings, and often show objects drawn from different perspectives in one work.

"So you have to sort of twist your brain around. One object is shown from above, the next object in the same drawing is shown from the side, and so on."

The work of the second generation-the transition generation-shows a transition in the art as well, Von Finckenstein said.

"They are sort of caught between the two cultures. They grew up on the land until their early twenties. And so they are fairly comfortable in both worlds but don't really belong in either. And their drawings are still very highly stylized, but of one perspective, and a little bit more kind of an attempt to place figures in a landscape instead of free floating space as in the first generation."

The work of the third generation-those who grew up in Pangnirtung-shows the impact of outside culture.

"They've grown up with television, and school, and videos, ad magazines, and comic books. And their drawings are very similar to what we're used to. They're totally very realistic, with shading and perspective and everything."

As Von Finckenstein explained, the Nuvisavik exhibit and book were put together to focus some long overdue attention to the work of the tapestry studio.

"I think that there has been virtually no attention paid ever to these wall hangings. For reasons that I don't quite understand, because they're very beautiful. And a fair amount has been done on prints and sculpture by Inuit, but never anything on these," Von Finckenstein said.

The seed of the project was planted a few years back, when Deborah Hickman, who had been general manager and artistic manager of the tapestry studio in the early 1980s approached Von Finckenstein about putting together something on the studio.

"And so we found an Inuk co-curator, somebody who grew up in Pangnirtung, outside and in the camp at Pangnirtung, and he joined our team and away we went."

That co-curator is July Papatsie, who brought to the project not only a knowledge of the culture and a link to the community, but also experience as an artist and previous experience as a curator.

Papatsie contributes one chapter to the book, full of interviews with community members who share their recollections about the way life used to be, and about the effects of the forced settlement on the people. He also provides descriptions of the tapestries, which are featured prominently throughout the book, and even more prominently in the museum exhibit.

The reactions of the people that have visited the exhibit have been very positive, Von Finckenstein said.

"Most people are totally surprised that these have never been shown before, or very little published on them, and are absolutely delighted. They look great. They really do."

Von Finckenstein has one theory as to why other Inuit art forms, such as print-making and sculpture, have received so much attention, while tapestry weving has been under-appreciated.

"I think there's a resistance because, although print-making obviously was never part of Inuit culture, it was introduced fairly early on. The earliest print collection from Cape Dorset came in 1958. So over the years people had time to get used to the fact that Inuit did print-making. And sculpture, of course, for some reason, was always from very early on, considered something Indigenous that the Inuit have done over centuries. Which is a myth. But still, people's perception was that sculpture, because they use materials from the land, they use bone, and antler, and stone, that this is somehow a traditional activity. Now, the stretch to make that weaving is also a genuine expression of Inuit culture, even though it uses foreign materials and a foreign technique, maybe that was too big of a leap for people to make.

"But our whole point in the exhibition, our big idea behind the exhibition, and anybody walking in there would agree, is that these tapestries are a genuine expression of Inuit culture. And yes, they use a foreign technique that was introduced to them, and a foreign material-wool, which doesn't exist in the north. But, you know, you wouldn't call a Canadian painter who uses acrylics from the U.S. and a canvas from England, you wouldn't say that this is not authentic Canadian art. So I think we have to learn to apply the same to Inuit art. Inuit art is art made by Inuit. Whether it uses bones from the land or wool from Iceland has nothing to do with the fact that this is art made by Inuit, and that this is a genuine expression of Inuit culture."

For more information on Nuvisavik-the place where we weave, see the Web site at www.civilization.ca. To order a copy of the book, visit cyberboutique.civilization.ca or call toll free 1-800-555-5621.