# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Meet mother and daughter sculptors Fran and Cathryn Jenkins who share a passion for stone and bronze. The Jenkins are participating in this year's Eastside Culture Crawl which is an annual visual arts, design and craft show running Nov 19 - 22.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Video: Sculptors bring passion for stone, bronze to the Eastside Culture Crawl

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Meet mother and daughter sculptors Fran and Cathryn Jenkins who share a passion for stone and bronze. The Jenkins are participating in this year's Eastside Culture Crawl which is an annual visual arts, design and craft show running Nov 19 - 22.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Namaste Canada 2018, a colourful cultural event, was organized by the Consulate General of India, Vancouver at the Michael J. Fox theatre in Burnaby on Saturday.

India has so much to offer the world. Whether it is our history or how our people live under one banner despite the differences in regional languages, culture, arts and even seasons.

Having been born in Mumbai and living in Vancouver, I find a lot of similarities between the two cities, especially their multicultural fabric.

Many colours of our culture and arts were brought together at Namaste Canada 2018, an event organized by the Consulate General of India, Vancouver in Burnaby over the Labour Day weekend. The India Cultural Association and many other groups came together to perform at the event. The grand finale performance "Om Shanti Om" was by the Shiamak group.

But if you missed it this year, here's a brief recap of the event held at the Michael J. Fox theatre:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A dive into Indian arts: Music, dance and tradition at Namaste Canada 2018

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Namaste Canada 2018, a colourful cultural event, was organized by the Consulate General of India, Vancouver at the Michael J. Fox theatre in Burnaby on Saturday. India has so much to offer the world. Whether it is our history or how our people live under one banner despite the differences in regional languages, culture, arts and even seasons.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
VANCOUVER - The Vancouver Art Gallery has unveiled a new, seven-member Asian Art Council, and announced two new appointments to its fledgling Institute of Asian Art, in a bid to further advance the city's reputation as a leader in promoting Asian art and culture.

The moves are the latest in a series of initiatives in recent years that has seen the gallery aggressively focus on Asian-themed exhibits.

The new art council, made up of seven scholars from China, India, Japan, South Korea and the U.S., will advise the Institute of Asian Art on how to enhance the visibility of Asian art locally.

Daina Augaitis, the art gallery's chief curator and associate director, said the scholars were chosen because of their respective expertise.

"Acknowledging a sense of place is one of the principal values of the Vancouver Art Gallery," said Augaitis. "We aim to increase our audiences' engagement with Asian art, particularly art from China, Japan, Korea and India."

The Institute of Asian Art was founded in the fall of 2014, and shortly afterward, the gallery hosted the high-profile "Forbidden City" exhibit featuring rare artifacts from Imperial China.

On Monday, gallery officials announced the addition of Chinese Canadian Artists Federation and Centre A co-founder Zheng Shengtian as the institute's adjunct director, as well as Diana Freundl as the institute's first curator solely focused on Asian exhibits. Freundl was previously the curator at Shanghai's Museum of Contemporary Art.

Vancouver Art Gallery director Kathleen Bartels said in a statement that Zheng has previously cooperated with the gallery, adding that Zheng will be "spearheading" the Institute of Asian Art's initiatives on public education, advanced scholarship, and collection acquisition.

Vancouver has potential as a North American hub for Asian arts, given the its frequent interactions with the Asia-Pacific region. Other institutions like UBC's Museum of Anthropology have moved in a similar direction, hosting exhibits from Taiwan and Indonesia in the next year. The Vancouver Art Gallery itself will welcome the works of Korean artist Lee Bul starting this fall, and those of New Delhi's Bharti Kher next summer.

Officials have raised concerns about the lack of space that prevents larger, higher-profile exhibits from coming to Vancouver. The gallery recently unveiled a controversial concept design for a new home, in which space would be set aside for Asian art. The fundraising goal for the facility is $350 million.

Former Asia Pacific Foundation president and CEO Yuen Pau Woo is one of the founders of Vancouver-based China Global, a non-profit society that promotes Chinese art and culture worldwide. Woo said he is hopeful that Monday's announcements will draw more attention to Vancouver.

"The more focus there is on Asian art and culture - and the more people doing it - the better for our city," said Woo, whose group is partnering with the gallery to host the chief Asian curator of New York's Guggenheim Museum next January. "The Vancouver Art Gallery's increasing interest in this area is encouraging. It's terrific they are doing it, and I hope they succeed."
chchiang@vancouversun.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
VAG appoints advisers to focus on Asian art

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Vancouver Art Gallery has unveiled a new, seven-member Asian Art Council, and announced two new appointments to its fledgling Institute of Asian Art, in a bid to further advance the city's reputation as a leader in promoting Asian art and culture.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Poutine, Mounties, canoes and universal health care: These are just a few things that have, over time, become synonymous with this country. But how did they attain such iconic status? Symbols of Canada, a new collection of essays and photography, gathers the origin stories of 22 objects, concepts and key moments in Canadian culture. Here, Colin M. Coates, a professor of Canadian studies and history at Glendon College, York University, looks to the artist Kent Monkman to help tell the tumultuous tale of the humble beaver.

Can there be a more obvious symbol of Canada than the beaver? No other animal, except for humans, is credited with the creation of the country. (Historically, the cod fish might have had something to say, but no one is listening to it.) "The beaver makes everything," said an Innu hunter to Jesuit missionary Paul Le Jeune in the seventeenth century: Its valuable pelt could be traded for whatever people desired. Maybe the beaver could even make Canada. Economic historian Harold Innis ascribed the geography of the Canadian state to the fur trade that moved west and north across the northern half of North America between roughly 1600 and 1850. (To be precise, he was writing before Newfoundland joined Canada). Since 1975, the beaver has even been an official symbol of Canada, though its route to that lofty position bears examination.

No less an authority than Joe ("I am Canadian"), speaking on behalf of Molson's Canadian beer, assured television watchers that "the beaver is a truly noble animal."

But Cree artist Kent Monkman captured the essence of the ambiguity of the beaver as a national symbol. In a parody of, and ironic commentary on, different genres of art, Monkman's 2016 painting Les Castors du Roi riffs off relevant images, including fanciful historical depictions, of the beaver. French and Indigenous hunters savagely murder the beaver with spears, daggers, leg-hold traps and guns, while church representatives stand idly by. On the right of the canvas, an anthropomorphized beaver prays to a Christian God, while beaver spirits ascend toward heaven.

Few urban Canadians today have ever seen a beaver. But the beaver warrants recognition, many Canadians have agreed, because it exemplifies a number of admirable human qualities, such as industriousness, technical expertise and foresight. In its actions, it might even embody an aspiration toward what the Canadian Constitution refers to as "peace, order and good government." The 1975 proposal to designate the beaver a national symbol allowed Canadians to debate issues of national identity in a largely playful fashion and to reaffirm some fairly vague national characteristics.

The beaver has uncontestably played a key role in the historical development of the country we know today. Unfortunately, from its point of view, it had to give its life to create Canada.

Adapted from Symbols of Canada (Between The Lines), edited by Michael Dawson, Catherine Gidney and Donald Wright.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Poutine, Mounties, canoes and universal health care: These are just a few things that have, over time, become synonymous with this country. But how did they attain such iconic status? Symbols of Canada, a new collection of essays and photography, gathers the origin stories of 22 objects, concepts and key moments in Canadian culture.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Heather Igloliorte, on her way to becoming the first (and only, to date) Inuk holder of a PhD in art history in Canada, was looking to write about artists from Nunatsiavut - the northern coastal area of Labrador. An artist herself from Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Igloliorte had suffered a serious, career-stalling car accident (traffic lights were out in Halifax after Hurricane Juan). So she was taking time out from her art practice to study art history. For her master's degree, she planned to write about artists from Nunatsiavut, which achieved self-government in 2005.

But a funny thing happened on the way to her thesis: She could find very little information about Nunatsiavummiut art or artists.

"It was really shocking to me that there were almost no exhibition catalogues, there were no books on Labrador Inuit art, there were just a handful of articles and magazine essays and so on," says Igloliorte, who is the Concordia University Research Chair in Indigenous Art History and Community Engagement. "And it was really surprising. I did not anticipate not finding things because I knew so many artists in Labrador."

So she began digging into what would become her PhD project. Ultimately, her efforts grew into a large exhibition and accompanying catalogue, SakKijajuk: Art and Craft from Nunatsiavut.

"How often do you get to create an exhibition that is from a group of artists that no one has ever heard of before?" Igloliorte says.

SakKijajuk, originally installed at The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery in St. John's before moving to the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, has now opened at the Winnipeg Art Gallery - coinciding with the WAG's groundbreaking for its Inuit Art Centre.

Nunatsiavut is the smallest of the four Inuit regions and the only one that is self-governing. There are five communities in the region - Nain, Hopedale, Makkovik, Postville and Rigolet - and two outside with large populations of Nunatsiavummiut, Happy Valley-Goose Bay and North West River.

WAG director Stephen Borys says Nunatsiavut is perhaps the least represented in the WAG's extensive Inuit art collection (of more than 13,000 works), "and sometimes the least understood in terms of art-making" in general, he says.

The reason Nunatsiavummiut artists have been largely excluded from the canon of Inuit and Canadian art history has nothing to do with their work and everything to do with geography - and politics. In brief, Labrador Inuit artists have been making work and trading with Europeans for centuries, so these objects can be found in museum collections around the world. When Newfoundland joined Confederation in 1949, the final Terms of Union failed to mention Indigenous peoples. As an (unintended) consequence, the artists were not eligible for federally funded Inuit art initiatives. Nor were they allowed to use the "Igloo" tag, denoting authentic Inuit art, until 1990. So at the same time that exposure and study of and demand for Inuit art was exploding into a multimillion-dollar industry, Nunatsiavummiut artists remained virtually invisible.

So this show is much more than an art exhibition; it's a righting of history.

"It's a nice breakthrough," says Happy Valley-Goose Bay artist Michael Massie, one of the artists in the show. "It's definitely deserved. We were never recognized."

SakKijajuk - which means "to be visible" in Inuttitut, the Labrador dialect of Inuktitut - includes nearly 90 works from 47 artists, divided into four categories. Elders, Trailblazers, Fire Keepers and The Next Generation may be artists many Canadians have never heard of, but this is art Canadians need to see.

"Canada is huge and the North right now is politically sensitive in terms of natural resources, sovereignty, the environment, water," Borys says. "All those things come out in the artwork because art is political."

The show

The exhibition opens with a powerful installation that speaks to the history of the region, Our Footprints Are Everywhere. That was the title of a landmark 1977 Labrador Inuit Association report that was instrumental in the successful land claim and the formation of Nunatsiavut. The installation is made up of a series of boots (or kamek) by different artists and one pair of moose-hide baby slippers.

"The reason we were able to establish our land claim is literally because our footprints were everywhere," Igloliorte says. "Being able to reference [that] we have travelled all over this part of the land - that was instrumental in us getting our land claim.

"The boots are speaking about how we travel on our land," she continues. "But then also it speaks very significantly to the transmission of knowledge, intergenerationally. Everyone who has a pair of kamek there learned from someone else in their family or they were passing it down, the skills, in that process."

The first pair, made from beaver fur, moose hide, wool and beads, is credited to Inez Shiwak and Jane Shiwak, her mother.

"Inez insisted that her mother be given credit for the collaboration on those boots, not because her mother did much of the sewing on those boots, but because her mother's knowledge was so integral," Igloliorte says.

In another series of works, Josephina Kalleo (1920-1993), one of the earliest artists to gain recognition in the region, drew scenes from her life on paper, which she then attached to standard-issue, letter-sized beige office file folders. As part of her job, she had been translating an elder's life story from Inuktitut into English. And while transcribing his story, she became inspired to tell her own. These drawings, along with the oral history she recorded for each image, are considered one of the best descriptions of transitional Labrador Inuit life during the mid-20th century.

The show, which includes many contemporary works, is not all drawings, sealskin and whalebone; the artists work with materials and media that one might not associate with traditional Inuit art - photography, video, oil paint. But historically, particularly for sculptors from this region - some living below the tree line - using out-of-the-box materials has been another obstacle to recognition.

When a photo of artist Michael Massie's silver ulu bowl was printed in an issue of Inuit Art Quarterly in the 1990s, just a tiny little photo in a corner of a page, there was an uproar; collectors, dealers and art historians protested and the magazine was deluged with angry mail.

"It's crazy to think that as early as two or three decades ago, the art world would have imposed such strict standards on Inuit art as to say stone is Inuit and metal is not or wood is not," Igloliorte says. "That is the history of Inuit art - of rules being imposed from outside. And then Inuit artists having to break through those barriers. So Mike is a trailblazer in that sense."

Massie has five works in this show, including a silver, ivory and wood teapot from 1996. He is now probably best known and widely celebrated for his teapots, but they were also initially rejected as "real" Inuit art by people operating in that world.

"It was just thrilling to be a stink-maker, causing stink," Massie says about that tempest over his teapots. "I loved it."

Another well-known sculptor in the show is Billy Gauthier, who made headlines when he went on a hunger strike to protest against the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project on the lower Churchill River.

The detail in Gauthier's work is breathtaking; in Song from the Spirit World, the gestures of his sculpture take their cues from his material, which include caribou and moose antler; his drum dancer's gestures follow the shapes provided by nature. The sinuous figure almost seems to be in motion, right down to his elegant, elongated hands.

Impact on artists

Igloliorte found her artists by travelling to communities in Labrador, getting on the radio in the morning and encouraging artists to come out and meet with her that day.

After she completed her PhD, she returned to Labrador, seeking input from the artists themselves - what did they want to do next? Through those conversations, the idea for an exhibition emerged.

First, she organized a community exhibition - whoever wanted to be in the show would be included and could submit up to three things. The show was held at the Kinsmen Community Centre in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, where temporary walls were built and draping covered the dart board. The show featured more than 170 works by nearly 100 artists; about a quarter of those artists ended up in this touring exhibition.

For Nunatsiavut art, SakKijajuk is seminal. And for some of the individual artists, it has been nothing short of life-changing.

Jason Jacque, from tiny Postville, has a serpentinite, wood, marble and bone sculpture, Shaman (2015), in the exhibition. The sculpture of a Shaman riding a wave is whimsical and complex; clearly the work of a skilled carver. And yet, Igloliorte reports, Jacque had never sold a piece before the show; he had only made artwork as gifts. Now, The Rooms has purchased Shaman and he has taken a leave of absence from his day job to study jewellery-making full-time; Igloliorte wrote his reference letter.

One of the final pieces in the show is a haunting, large-scale pen and ink drawing, Sacrilege (2015) - in which an Inuk man finds himself caught between two worlds - the one he knows and the invading colonialism. In front of him is a shaman; there is a tiny herd of caribou emerging from his beak-like mouth, and an upside-down cross. Standing behind the man is a Bible-toting missionary, trying to draw him back with a string of rosary beads. The man, clinging to his dogsled, looks out at the viewer, terrified.

It's the largest work Rigolet artist Jason Sikoak had made to date and it earned him an instant commission from a Toronto woman who saw Sacrilege at the opening in St. John's.

"What's amazing is Jason was so ignited by this process," Igloliorte says. "He's now going to art school. He's changing his career and deciding to pursue being an artist full-time."

SakKijajuk is at the Winnipeg Art Gallery until Oct. 14. From there, the exhibit will travel to the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina (Feb. 14-June 2, 2019) and the Art Gallery of Windsor (Oct. 19, 2019-Jan. 26, 2020).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Winnipeg Art Gallery's exhibition of Labrador Inuit art a righting of history

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Heather Igloliorte, on her way to becoming the first (and only, to date) Inuk holder of a PhD in art history in Canada, was looking to write about artists from Nunatsiavut - the northern coastal area of Labrador. An artist herself from Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Igloliorte had suffered a serious, career-stalling car accident (traffic lights were out in Halifax after Hurricane Juan).