Music Born of the Cold
Exploring the intersection of Inuit art and music.
Kenojuak Ashevak, “Guardians of Katajjaniq,” 1992 (collection of Jean-Jacques Nattiez; © reproduced with the permission of Dorset Fine Arts; photo by Christine Guest, MMFA)
Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq won the Polaris Prize in 2014 for Canada’s best album of the year. Animism contained sounds never heard before in Canadian pop music: breathy throat singing, screeches, roars and other human sounds for which the English language has no names. Tagaq’s music was ambiguous. She seemed a shamanic figure.
Suddenly, she and other throat singers were everywhere. Indigenous artist Caroline Monnet incorporated Tagaq soundtracks into her hypnotic art videos. Some touring rock groups hired throat singers as opening acts. For a time, no television variety program was complete without a guest spot for throat singers.
Mattiusi Iyaituk, “Much Power in the Words,” 2005 (MMFA, purchase, the Canada Council for the Arts’ Acquisition Assistance Program and the Serge Desroches Bequest; photo by Christine Guest, MMFA)
Tagaq may have seemed like a new and unique voice. But she had basically jazzed up a genre of Inuit music that has been performed on the land we now call Canada for thousands of years.
If you are curious about Inuit music, the splendid exhibition, ᑐᓴᕐᓂᑐᑦ TUSARNITUT! Music Born of the Cold, at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, is not to be missed. Tagaq is there in two videos, one unnamed and the other called Illunikavi.
“ᑐᓴᕐᓂᑐᑦ TUSARNITUT! Music Born of the Cold,” 2022-23
installation view at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (photo by Denis Farley, MMFA)
The show, which continues to March 12, includes some 100 prints, sculptures, videos, ceremonial masks, animal-skin drums and works in other media.
The signature piece is Guardians of Katajjaniq, which shows two female throat singers – they could be Tagaq’s aunties, for all we know – facing one another as they sing, magically summoning four large birds above them. The brilliantly coloured lithograph was created in 1992 by Kenojuak Ashevak, of Kinngait (Cape Dorset) in Nunavut. Viewing just this wonderful work is worth the price of admission.
Another showstopper is a serpentine sculpture almost two feet in height, Untitled (Drum Beater), by Davie Atchealak, also from Kinngait. The standing stone man is beating a hand-held drum. His mouth is open, his head thrown back. He simultaneously emotes ecstasy and pain as he beats out an ancient story. I simply could not take my eyes off him.
Davie Atchealak, “Untitled (Drum Beater),” about 1996 (collection of Lois and Daniel Miller; photo by Christine Guest, MMFA)
No Inuit exhibition is complete these days without something by Shuvinai Ashoona, the Nunavut artist who has become prominent since Annie Pootoogook, the 2006 Sobey Art Award winner, started fading from view in the years before her tragic drowning in 2016. Ashoona is represented by Untitled (Guitar), a real electric guitar painted with colourful scenes in her iconic style. The guitar can be seen as a symbol of the North-South culture clash.
A Pootoogook work expected to be in the show could not be included due to some 11th-hour problem. However, there are several works by her Kinngait relatives, including a 2002 lithograph, My New Accordian, by the late Napachie Pootoogook. It shows a woman in a traditional Inuit parka dancing as she plays a large accordion.
Karoo Ashevak, “Untitled (Drum Beater),” about 1973 (MMFA, purchase, gift of L. Marguerite Vaughan; © Public Trustee of Nunavut, Estate of Karoo Ashevak; photo Christine Guest, MMFA)
The show offers thoughtful works along with eye (and ear) candy from various northern nations. It is also educational, teaching viewers about musical traditions in circumpolar regions most of us will never visit.
The show travels to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto after its Montreal run. But, really, it should be seen everywhere. ■
ᑐᓴᕐᓂᑐᑦ TUSARNITUT! Music Born of the Cold at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts until from Nov. 10, 2022, to March 12, 2023. Organized by Montreal ethnomusicologist Jean-Jacques Nattiez and museum curators Lisa Qiluqqi Koperqualuk and Charissa von Harringa.
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