The exhibition ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ/Ruovttu Guvlui/Homeward which debuted on June 11 has not received the attention it deserves. Admittedly, this is not the most imposing of the exhibitions mounted by the Canadian Center for Architecture (CCA). The tone is rather intimate and the number of artefacts rather limited. But that does not prevent her from talking about subjects of considerable importance. Subjects that can no longer be avoided these days.
We could even see in this relative silence the signs of a lingering malaise. This event – because that is what it is – raises more questions than it offers answers, but these questions, which deserve our full attention, must be heard with lucidity, despite centuries of ‘avoidance.
Let’s sum it up: how can Inuit, Sami and other Arctic communities recreate — is that the right word? —, adapting, inventing spaces of self-determination despite the heavy legacy that Westerners have left them, a legacy that is also now part of their history? White colonizers imposed values and relationships with the world on Aboriginal people. They have often established a way of approaching, of appropriating the territory. This exhibition begins by explaining to us how the terms of art and architecture do not really have an equivalent in Inuktitut…
In a presentation text, one of the co-curators, Rafico Ruiz, even explains how the introduction of the notion of art in Nunavut was perceived as a “kind of technique of control by the settlers”. Word angirramut (ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ) and the equivalent term in the Sami language — ruovttu guvlui —, words which give the title to this exhibition and which mean “going home”, would make it possible, within the framework of this presentation, to account for “intersections between art and architecture”, this path which will help the Nordic peoples to reinvent themselves, for their future, a home that includes both the private dwelling and the surrounding space.
The exhibition also begins with a presentation of drawings by Shuvinai Ashoona, Itee Pootoogook, Kananginak Pootoogook, Hannah Kigusiuq, Padloo Samayualie and Tuumasi Kudluk, which allow us to consider how the Inuit and the Sami represent their habitat.
Further on, the visitor will notice how nine young “architects, designers and duojars [artisans traditionnels samis] » have established a dialogue in order to rethink responses to the needs of Aboriginal communities.
But there is more…
An exceptional work
If only for this work, you have to go to the CCA. For this exhibition, artists Taqralik Partridge and Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory created a video installation of almost 20 minutes entitled Inissaliortut: Making Room. Two women set out the living conditions in a Great North transformed by colonialism. It is disturbingly intense. To quote: “Colonization is the largest industry in the Arctic. And the poverty of the Inuit is the product of this industry. Why build an industry that makes people poor in their own territory? Why exploit? What is there to exploit? The problematization. Take away self-determination and replace it with capitalism. Take away certainty and replace it with self-soothing. Take away food sovereignty and replace it with food insecurity. Remove language and culture and replace them with insufficient levels of education. Remove work in the territory and replace it with unemployment. And the rest of the video is just as striking.
In the same room, Taqralik Partridge has installed photos taken in Nunavut, Iqaluit and even Dorval showing how the Inuit, unlike the qallunaat — individuals who are not Inuit — use marginal, less noble spaces…
And it should also be said that if this exhibition is a great premiere, it is because it was organized by four Inuit and Sami co-curators…
As an aboriginal artist told me a few years ago, white people who live in the southernmost part of Canada do not realize that the aboriginal peoples, who are our neighbors, live in miserable conditions, worthy of those that exist. in what used to be called the Third World. And if we could reproach the CCA for not being sufficiently interested in Canadian and Quebec architectural and urban issues, this exhibition is certainly a sign that things are changing… Even without always offering clear answers to current social problems, this exhibition has the great merit of approaching a world that the West has too often ignored.