Drawing by Pudlo Pudlat
At
its heart, this conversation is centered on encounters, from the
artist Arvo Leo’s chance discovery of a book about one of the most
prolific, yet little known artists in Canada, to Pudlo Pudlat’s own
drawings, over 4000 renderings that reveal the Arctic landscape as a
site of transition, a region that from 1940s onward, was inundated
with new technologies, new religion, and ideas that radically changed
the way of life for those in the far north. Looking critically at the
conditions of production, the conversation will provide a background
on the development of the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative in the
1950s. In a place where paper currency was a relatively recent
introduction, the program introduced art-making as a means to replace
incomes lost after the collapse of the fur trade. Collectively,
Pudlat’s drawings reveal a cosmology. In them, fish pull airplanes,
humans ride muskox, and seals have the ability to teleport to the
sky. Arvo Leo's encounters in Cape Dorset extend these readings of
Pudlo's world as drawings transfigure into a fresh interrogation of
landforms, community practices and the rhythm of Inuktitut songs. By
way of acoustically and visually engaging with scenes of daily life,
human-animal relations and intricate contingencies of the Canadian
Arctic in a time of ecological shift, Fish Plane, Heart Clock
unravels an organic correspondence between the camera and the
drawing. Candice Hopkins and Natasha Ginwala
Candice
Hopkins and Natasha Ginwala discuss the work of Arvo Leo and Pudlo
Pudlat.
27/09/2015
3 pm
La
Loge, Brussels
