ARTH 298 Special Topics in Genre Studies: Inuit Graphic Arts in Canada

• Tuesdays, 14:45-17:15 pm
• Course delivery: Online
• Instructor: Amy Prouty

This course presents a survey of the diverse regional styles, histories, and mediums of graphic arts across the four Inuit homelands within Canada: the Inuvialuit Settlement Region (northern Northwest Territories), Nunavut, Nunavik (northern Quebec) and Nunatsiavut (northern Labrador). Students will learn about major artists, the development of various Inuit printmaking techniques, the linkages between contemporary graphic art and older forms of Inuit visual culture such as textile work, mapmaking, and engraving, the history of Inuit art cooperatives, and the breakthrough of Inuit drawings into the mainstream art world during the mid 2000s.

Additionally, the course covers the social, political, economic, and cultural context of Inuit graphic arts. Topics to be covered include the impact of neoliberalism and settler colonialism on Inuit art production, differences between Indigenous and Western philosophies of art, artmaking as a form of cultural resilience, the gendered aspects of Inuit graphic art, transculturation and settler notions of cultural “authenticity”, the use of drawing as a form of auto-ethnography, Inuit modernism and futurism, as well as a detailed look into the complex relationship between Inuit imagery, twentieth century primitivism, and Canadian nationalism.