Exhibition Highlights
A behind-the-scenes look at some notable projects on view now
A sneak peek at some current and upcoming exhibitions and projects.
A major part of the story of this exhibition is the epic quest to find artworks by Alootook— he never had a dealer and by and large his work was not collected by public art galleries, so it’s mostly in private collections. Heather, Christine and I compiled a list of all the galleries and individuals who might own his work, and then systematically contacted them over several years. We also used social media, put an ad in the IAQ, got significant media coverage and made a poster to put up around Ottawa and Iqaluit. Alootook had a show of drawings at the Manx Pub in Ottawa in 1993, so I contacted them for tips and names. While Walking Both Sides of an Invisible Border is up at CUAG, we’ll be presenting a small show in October at the Manx, featuring original Nuna and Vut comic strips.
The exhibition will have about 75 works, including a selection of amazing drawings from the book Arctic Dreams and Nightmares (1993). We have many original Ice Box and Nuna and Vut comic strips, and individual editorial and political cartoons that were published in the magazines Inuit Monthly and Inuit Today. They’re wonderful satirical cartoons that are small and will demand close looking, so we’re thinking about how best to present them. Representing Alootook’s career as a writer is another interesting challenge. The exhibition will also feature some of his posters, illustrations and other design work, to demonstrate his expertise in graphic design. We’ll include original copies of some of the magazines in which Alootook’s cartoons, poems and articles were reproduced, because there’s quite an important interplay between the visual and the textual in his work and thinking. We want to make sure visitors make links between the interrelated aspects of his practice. The exhibition is called Walking Both Sides of an Invisible Border after the title of one of his poems. It’s a perfect title for the exhibition because he wrote it to describe his daily struggle, “walking in two different worlds.” We all thought, “What other title can there be?”