Isuma at the Venice Biennale

The Canadian pavilion brings Inuit perspectives to issues that also face other parts of the world.

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The video-based installation by Isuma – the Inuit collective representing Canada at the Venice Biennale – stands in sharp contrast to the decadence of this exclusive stage for international art.

Isuma, Canada’s first Inuit production company, has long focused on telling Inuit stories. Here the main feature relates to the forced relocation of people across the North, a theme that resonates with current international issues related to displacement and resists the patriotic mood looming over this ostentatious event.

During nearly 30 years of work to preserve Inuit culture, Isuma has been acclaimed around the world and has won countless awards, breaking many barriers for Indigenous-language film. This is another milestone – the first time Inuit artists have exhibited at Canada’s pavilion during its 60-year history.

At the biennale, which opened May 11 and continues until Nov. 24, the centrepiece at the newly renovated Canada Pavilion is a new dramatic film, One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk, which tells the story of one man’s experience of involuntary relocation by the Canadian government in 1961.

While watching, I continually had to remind myself that this story was scripted from a historical account. Brilliant portrayals of Piugattuk (Apayata Kotierk) and the government agent known as Boss (Kim Bodnia) provide a slow-paced look at the critical yet confused interactions between two cultures.

The painstaking English-Inuktitut translations of Benjamin Kunuk (as Evaluarjuk) and their constant misunderstandings reinforce the struggle between Eurocentric perspectives and those of the Inuit. It’s a reminder that conversations like these continue today during the ongoing work of truth and reconciliation.

Isuma also brings the story to life with in-depth content in its online exhibition, sustaining a commitment to create dialogues beyond the biennale and broaden knowledge of Piugattuk’s legacy of activism and resistance.

Piugattuk was born in 1900 before outside influences reached his area of Baffin Island, and worked to sustain Inuit culture during a prolonged period of colonial erasure. When he died in 1995, he was a respected elder in Igloolik, a small community in Nunavut.

Another key component of this extended conversation is an ongoing real-time webcast, Silakut Live from the Floe Edge, which broadcasts Inuit conversations on pressing issues, such as expanding resource extraction and potential impacts on the North’s changing climate.

Visitors to the Canadian pavilion near the ever-rising tides of Venice’s canals can eavesdrop on conversations live-streamed from the floe edge in Foxe Basin off Baffin Island.

The North is where we find director Zacharias Kunuk, who leads Isuma with Norman Cohn and is a distant relative of Piugattuk. Seemingly unconcerned about Venice’s glitz and glamour, Kunuk is out on the land, thousands of miles away from the opening, focused on building dialogue.

As the third day of preview events winds down in Venice, final scenes from the live broadcast show a freshly caught seal being skinned and harvested. Kunuk appears periodically from the floe edge chatting with people from the community, as if the biennale is the farthest thing from his mind. ■

In the spirit of creative democracy, Isuma’s presentation at the Venice Biennale is available online at www.isuma.tv. New material will be posted until November.

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