New exhibition
From June 18, 2021 to February 12, 2023
QUÉBEC CITY, June 17, 2021 /CNW Telbec/ - Inuit art is fascinating and engaging. The Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ) will celebrate the diversity of this age-old culture in a singular manner from June 18, 2021, to February 12, 2023 , through the work of Manasie Akpaliapik , one of the foremost Inuit sculptors of his generation.
Manasie Akpaliapik is the first museum monograph devoted to the artist from the especially fertile environment of Baffin Island in Nunavut . Inuit Universe. The Raymond Brousseau Collection will enable visitors to undertake a unique, exciting journey to the northern territory.
The exhibition proposes an outstanding collection of 40 sculptures, produced between 1997 and 2003, drawn mainly from the Raymond Brousseau Collection. In 2005, with financial assistance from Hydro-Québec, the major collector and Inuit art dealer from Québec City donated 2 635 works to the MNBAQ, making it one of the most remarkable collections in Canada , in which Manasie Akpaliapik's sculptures figure prominently.
"Manasie Akpaliapik proposes striking works that meld the traditional and the contemporary. The themes and materiality of his work appeal to our emotions and our senses. A striking encounter with an outstanding artist awaits you." Jean–Luc Murray, Director General of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec said.
Nature is central to Manasie Akpaliapik's creation
"Sometimes I am unable to verbalize what I feel inwardly,
which I then express through my art."
- Manasie Akpaliapik
In perfect symbiosis with nature, the artist has for more than five decades sought in his ancestral environment the inspiration and the materials that spawn in his imaginative universe unique, astonishing, indeed very profound works. His sculptures are fascinating objects imbued with symbols of the mythology of the North and the multifaceted use of the elements selected. They tell the story of the Inuit and encourage reflection at a time when relations between humankind, nature, and the climate are of paramount concern.
Incredibly powerful sculptures
Manasie Akpaliapik. Inuit Universe. The Raymond Brousseau Collection broaches varied, captivating themes: Animals; Talilayuq, Goddess of the Sea; Stories and Legends; The Inuit and His Culture; The Sacred Owl; and Shamanism. Representations of wildlife, legends of the North, the supernatural world, the transmission of knowledge, and the Arctic environment embodied in three dimensions characterize by and large the works exhibited.
Among the masterpieces in the exhibition, mention should be made of La Peur de perdre sa culture (circa 2000), made of whale bone and caribou antler. It strikingly illustrates how, after World War II, federal authorities forced the Inuit to adopt the lifestyle of southern residents, thereby making them renounce nomadism for a settled mode of life. Their traditional way of life was systematically uprooted and Christianity was imposed on them. The shaman personified has been split in two by the devastating impacts on his community of this new way of life.
Another sculpture broaches a well-known theme of Inuit mythology, that of the legend of Talilayuq, or Sedna: Talilayuq, Goddess of the Sea (2000), made of whale bone, caribou antler, fieldstone, and alabaster. The work relates a story handed down through the generations that tells how the goddess, half woman, half fish, rules over all marine animals. When angry, Talilayuq traps the marine animals in her hair and only the shaman's intervention can calm her and free the imprisoned wildlife.
The works Un Inuit songeant à l'univers (2000), Un jeune homme exposant fièrement le fait que ses connaissances proviennent des aînés et de ses ancêtres (1997) and Phoques (circa 2000), clearly reveal the sculptor's skill. Visitors can appreciate his unique manner of combining different materials such as whale bone, caribou antler, ox horn, alabaster, or Brazil soapstone, and the virtuosity of this master sculptor.
An art that has changed over time
The peoples of the circumpolar regions have carved stone and ivory for thousands of years. Starting in the 16th century, contacts between the Inuit and explorers fostered trade. It was only in the first half of the 20th century, at a time when the nomadic northern populations adopted a settled mode of life and had to find a livelihood that the first cooperatives were established and artists began to produce prints and large-scale sculptures sent to the south. Manasie Akpaliapik's artistic career perfectly illustrates changes in Inuit art over time.
A fabulous journey to the land of the Inuit
The exhibition's staging evokes the northern territories, reproducing the horizon between the sky and the sea or between the sky and the land. The artist's sculptures are arranged in a circular space bathed in theatrical lighting, thus creating a unique atmosphere in which subtle modulation of the light echoes the solar cycle in the Arctic circle. The custom-made furnishings evoke the morphology of the Arctic landform.
Complementary explorations
Aside from discovering the artist's sculptures in an inspiring space, visitors are invited to examine Manasie Akpaliapik's creative process through two mediation spaces.
At the entrance to the exhibition room, a story accompanied by a series of photographs evokes the artist's annual trips to his native region in ???????, Ikpiarjuk ( Arctic Bay ), to collect whale bones washed up on the beach, aided by members of his family and his community of origin. The trips ranging over thousands of kilometres devoted to collecting his favourite material seem indissociable from the subsequent creative work in the artist's studio. Visitors will also discover the artist's profound, unfailing respect for the animals, from the collection of bones washed up on the beaches of Nunavut to the discovery of the subject that emerges from each fragment of material.
To conclude the exhibition, an alcove presents a selection of photographs focusing on the two geographic poles that characterize Manasie Akpaliapik's artistic practice: his studio, in southern Ontario , and his native region in the Arctic, to which he returns every year. In addition to these visual souvenirs, a whale vertebra loaned by the Group for Research and Education on Marine Mammals enables visitors to become familiar with this unusual material.
In the same area, visitors can also watch a continuous video in which Manasie Akpaliapik recounts his life trajectory and creative process.
Manasie Akpaliapik in a nutshell
Manasie Akpaliapik is a native of Baffin Island in Nunavut , more specifically the village of Ikpiarjuk ( Arctic Bay ), one of the northernmost Inuit sites in Canada's Far North. He was born in 1955 in a small community of seal hunters. From childhood, he devoted himself to sculpture by observing members of his family, including his grandparents and one of his aunts. In the early 1980s, he became a professional sculptor. The work of this outstanding observer of the oral tradition, moral values, wildlife, the supernatural world, and the Arctic environment revealed itself in Montréal and Toronto .
Carved in whale bones, caribou antlers, or walrus ivory, the works of this master stone carver can also be hewn in an exceptional manner out of Brazil soapstone, dolomite, or even marble. Manasie Akpaliapik's sculptures exert tremendous attractive power and are admired in the leading museum and private collections in Canada , but also in the United States , and Europe .
Raymond Brousseau and
Manasie Akpaliapik, a unique bond
The MNBAQ has for several years enjoyed privileged relations with the great Québec City Inuit art collector and dealer Raymond Brousseau. His collection, one of the most prestigious in the world, is showcased in the Ilippunga room in the Pierre Lassonde Pavilion, where a number of the most outstanding works are displayed. They include La Maternité and Hommage aux animaux , two major sculptures by Manasie Akpaliapik that delight visitors.
Moreover, the ties that unite the collector and the artist go back 40 years and are imbued with deep-seated admiration, great respect, and genuine friendship. Raymond Brousseau does not hesitate to describe Manasie Akpaliapik as the foremost Inuit artist of all time. In 2005, when the time came to relinquish his collection, Mr. Brousseau kept 37 of Manasie Akpaliapik's sculptures, which visitors can admire at the exhibition. With the future acquisition of these outstanding works and through a generous donation by the collector, the MNBAQ will become the depositary of the biggest collection of works by Manasie Akpaliapik ever assembled.
Credits
Manasie Akpaliapik. Univers inuit. La collection Raymond Brousseau, an exhibition developed by the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.
Directorship
Annie GAUTHIER
Director of Collections and Exhibitions, MNBAQ
Management
Pascal NORMANDIN
Head of Exhibitions and Curatorial, MNBAQ
Yasmée Faucher
Head of Museography, MNBAQ
Catherine GAUMOND
Head of Collections, MNBAQ
Curatorship
Daniel DROUIN
Curator of Ancient Art and in charge of the Inuit Art Collection from 2005 to 2020,
MNBAQ
Exhibition and Graphic Design
Marie-France Grondin
Designer, MNBAQ
Scenario and texts of gallery panels and labels
Manasie AKPALIAPIK
Annie AKPALIAPIK
Daniel DROUIN
Gallery Mediation
Delphine EGESBORG
Head of Family Mediation, MNBAQ
The Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec is a state corporation funded by the Gouvernement du Québec .
Manasie Akpaliapik. Inuit Universe. The Raymond Brousseau Collection
Gérard-Morisset Pavilion of the MNBAQ
From June 18, 2021 to February 12, 2023
SOURCE Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec
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