Heather Igloliorte presented at the seminar in Indigenous Arts in Transition on Wednesday, October 13, at 12:15 pm. Her talk was entitled “Visiting INUA: Curating the Inaugural Exhibition of the New Inuit Art Centre, Qaumajuq.”

In this seminar, Inuk scholar and curator Dr. Heather Igloliorte discusses the processes, motivations, insights, and Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies that informed the creation and installation of the first exhibition of the new international Inuit Art Centre, Qaumajuq, which opened at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in March of 2021. INUA, which refers to spirit or life force and is also an acronym for Inuit Nunangat Ungammuaktut Atautikkut or ‘Inuit Moving Forward Together,’ is the result of a large-scale collaboration with not only an exceptional team of emerging curators, artists, and academics, but also with numerous other Inuit and Inuvialuit who contributed to the development of the exhibition. The exhibition is a ground-breaking survey of contemporary Inuit art from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland—or Inuit Nunaat—which features over one hundred works made by more than 90 artists in diverse media ranging from sound and video, painting, textile work, wearable art, installation, sculpture, and more.

Dr. Heather Igloliorte (Inuk and Newfoundlander, Nunatsiavut) is the University Research Chair in circumpolar indigenous arts at Concordia University in Tiohtiá:ke/ Montreal, where she co-directs the Indigenous Futures Research Centre and directs Inuit Futures in Arts Leadership: The Pilimmaksarniq / Pijariuqsarniq Project (2018–2025), an initiative that supports Inuit and Inuvialuit postsecondary students to explore professional career paths in all aspects of the arts. Igloliorte’s research focuses on Inuit and other circumpolar Indigenous art histories, material and new media art practices, critical Indigenous museology, and curatorial studies. She publishes frequently on Indigenous art and curatorial practice and has been a curator for sixteen years. Igloliorte is the president of the Board of the Inuit Art Foundation; she also serves as the co-chair of the Indigenous Circle for the Winnipeg Art Gallery; is on the board of directors for the Native North American Art Studies Association; and sits on the faculty council of the Otsego Institute for Native American Art History at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York, among others.