Updates and highlights from the world of Inuit art and culture
Isuma to Represent Canada at the 58th Venice Biennale
Artist collective Isuma has been named the 2019 representative of the Canada Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale by the National Gallery of Canada. Isuma was co-founded in 1990 by Zacharias Kunuk, OC, Pauloosie Qulitalik, Paul Apak Angilirq and Norman Cohn. Their cinematic work has been celebrated all over the world, most notably winning the Caméra d’Or for Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, in May 2001, at Cannes.
This is only the second time that an Inuk artist has been featured at the fair. The IAQ previously reported the inclusion of Kananginak Pootoogook, RCA, in the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017.
In 2002 both Atanarjuat and Nunavut (Our Land), a 13-part TV series, were shown at documenta11 in Kassel, Germany. Isuma’s second feature, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, opened the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival, and its third feature, Before Tomorrow, written and directed by women’s video collective Arnait Video Productions, based in Iglulik, was screened in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.
Isuma, currently celebrating their 30th year, was featured on the cover of the IAQ’s 25th Anniversary issue in 2011. In 2016 the IAF was proud to sponsor Isuma’s release Maliglutit (Searchers) as part of the 17th annual imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival. The film went on to win Best Indigenous Language Production. Most recently, the IAQ featured Kunuk as an elder artist in our 30th Anniversary issue’s Portfolio “30 Artists to Know.”
“Inuit went from Stone Age to Digital Age in my lifetime,” said Kunuk in a statement. “Everything is taught by what you see. Your father’s fixing up the harpoon; you watch how he does it and you learn from it. For the medium I work in now, it was the same. Oral history and new technology match.
I am trying to do this with my videos—tell the story behind how we lived. We try to make everything authentic, so a hundred years from now when people see our films, they’ll know how to do it.”