what sustains us

McMaster Museum of Art ~ May 12, 2022 – July 29, 2022

what sustains us celebrates the mutually sustaining relationships Inuit have with sila (weather), nuna (land), imaq (water), piruqtuminiit (plants) and nirjut (animals), with ourselves, and with each other.  

Rooted in Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ), which instructs Inuit how to “live a good life,” the artworks in this exhibition consider human sustenance as interdependent with how we care for ourselves, our communities, and the earth. As vignettes, they offer a glimpse into the embodied knowledge transmitted over thousands of years living in relation to all

that animates the cosmos. 

As Kānaka Maoli scholar Mehana Blaich Vaughan so elegantly describes in He haku aloha : research as lei making, “My research focuses on ʻāina, land, or that which feeds. There is no ʻāina without people, those who are fed by a particular place.” Vaughan’s words offer a paradigm through which to consider the centrality of reciprocal relationality

within the Inuit world.

The artists in this exhibition take us through the Inuit Nunaat as it shifts and changes with the seasons. They animate nuna with visualizations of hunting, fishing, harvesting, and play engaged in and shared by Inuit, and teach us that each season provides all that is needed for the next. This life cycle is truncated by collective moments of love, joy and levity, reminding us that it is important to care for our spirits as we do our physical being.

Everything we need to sustain ourselves is here on earth.