Arctic Highways

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Meryl McMaster, "What Will I Say to the Sky and Earth II," 2022

Join us for the opening reception of the Arctic Highways exhibit on September 9, 5:00PM at the Yukon Arts Centre.

Across the Arctic landscape, culture and art has traveled effortlessly along with the movement of the wind, the sun and our reindeer herds, creating a network of Arctic Highways. Highways that are cultural and spiritual, real and thriving – but as invisible as the system of national borders that have imposed their rigidness and weight upon us, pitilessly trying to nullify the free flow of ideas and identity connecting our souls.

We are indigenous peoples who live in different countries and on different continents, and yet regard ourselves as peoples with kindred spirits. The borders of nation states, arbitrarily drawn without regard to the landscapes of our ancestors, have been used to group the Sámi people, and to set us up to fight against our brothers and sisters living on the other side, fencing in and silencing our voices and our knowledge.

With this exhibition we want to tell our own story, through our own experiences, using our own forms of expression. We want to provide opportunities to think broadly about what it means to be unbounded, pointing to the limits that borders set, not just for indigenous people, but for all of us.

It takes its starting point in the pandemic that swept over the world during 2020 and 2021. How will its ramifications affect indigenous peoples? Can the knowledge of our ancestors, which we still have partially intact, become important and valuable in a changed global reality?

We, twelve indigenous artists from the Arctic region, ask you to join us in a search for answers and commonalities, and for a way to cross the frozen borderland between the two words “us” and “them”. Together we can embark on a journey along the Arctic highway of culture and life that stretches from the past into the future – without ever passing a border.