Claire Foussard and Oo Aqpik
Thursday, February 24 | 6 to 7 pm
Join Claire Foussard and Oo Aqpik-Kierstead as they examine and discuss the evolving ways visual art has been used to maintain tradition and share Inuit cultural knowledge with the world since the 1980s.
Oo Aqpik-Kierstead is an Inuit artist, activist, and producer. Born in Frobisher Bay, NWT (now Iqaluit, Nunavut), she is a self-taught acrylic painter, host/producer of Inuktitut programming in both radio and television, and a strong advocate for Inuit culture.
Claire Foussard is an American art dealer, curator, and former director of Ki Smith Gallery Harlem and East Village in New York. Since 2017, she has worked with Kinngait Studios and the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative as a research resident and ongoing consultant.
Both speakers, will discuss how the founding of West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative has transformed artistic production for the Kinngait (formerly Cape Dorset) community.
This lecture is organized in conjunction with A Story in Three Parts: Ashevak, Pootoogook, Isuma. which was curated by William Huffman. It is on view until May 8, 2022.
FREE. Registration required.
Speaker Bios:
Claire Foussard is an American art dealer, curator, and former director of Ki Smith Gallery Harlem and East Village. She has collaborated with the Inuit artists of Kinngait Studios and the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative since her 2017 research residency and she continues to produce significant scholarship on the evolution of graphic arts production in the Canadian Arctic. She received her bachelor’s degree in art history and anthropology from Colgate University and is currently an MA candidate in the Art Business program at Sotheby’s Institute of Art.
Oo Aqpik-Kierstead was born in Frobisher Bay, Northwest Territories. She spent her childhood in Lake Harbour/Kimmirut. At 15, she attended Ukiivik Residential School in Iqaluit. She has produced many Inuktitut television and radio shows, as well as being a host for Inuit Broadcasting Corporation and CBC North. She had a starring role in the 2014 film Arctic Defenders. As a self-taught artist, she started off with acrylic painting, before branching into various mediums, including working with sealskin. In 2017, she took part in Kanata 150? at Studio 66, as one of seven Indigenous artists who explored counter-narratives of colonization. Aqpik-Kierstead currently lives in Ottawa.
