Helping Hands: 30 Years at Kinngait Studios / ᐃᑲᔪᖅᑏᑦ: ᐅᑭᐅᓂᒃ 30−ᓂᒃ ᑭᙵᓂᑦ ᓴᓇᕝᕕᖕᒥᑦ

Helping Hands: 30 Years at Kinngait Studios / ᐃᑲᔪᖅᑏᑦ: ᐅᑭᐅᓂᒃ 30−ᓂᒃ ᑭᙵᓂᑦ ᓴᓇᕝᕕᖕᒥᑦ

February 19 – June 5, 2022
The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John’s, NL
Curated by Nakasuk Alariaq
Curatorial Advisors: Nancy Campbell, Mireille Eagan

Inuit Futures in Arts Leadership was proud to partner with The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador to organize Helping Hands: 30 Years at Kinngait Studios / ᐃᑲᔪᖅᑏᑦ: ᐅᑭᐅᓂᒃ 30−ᓂᒃ ᑭᙵᓂᑦ ᓴᓇᕝᕕᖕᒥᑦ, curated by Inuit Futures Ilinniaqtuk Nakasuk Alariaq, an Inuk-Finnish graduate student, educator, curator, and writer from Kinngait, Nunavut.

It takes many hands to make one print. The artists and printers at Kinngait Studios in Kinngait (formerly Cape Dorset), Nunavut, have been celebrated globally since the 1960s for their innovative contemporary art practices. Exploring their art from an Inuk perspective, this exhibition spans thirty years of work from a significant donation of prints by William Ritchie, a Newfoundland and Labrador-based visual artist/printmaker who was Arts Advisor and Studio Manager at Kinngait Studios from 1988-2019. The selected artworks reveal a stunning diversity of creative expressions in Kinngait, from everyday life in The North to shifting ideas of Inuit art in the south, from the changes in infrastructure and globalization, to the importance of collaboration. At its core, this exhibition shares how Kinngait Studios has long been a space for community.