Voices of Iguarsivik School’s youth resonate through MNBAQ exhibit
Have you heard about this? A group of 25 students from Iguarsivik School have not only won an Initiative Prize, one of the Essor Recognition Awards categories, but their artworks are also on exhibit at Quebec City’s Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ) until June 2, 2024.
We met with a few of the key players in this project in order to tell you about it. Here we would like to share some further information about this exhibit currently at the MNBAQ.
The exhibit Tarratuutiq | Taima, currently on display at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ), is a powerful example of collaboration and exchange taking place between North and South. It also represents the outcome of a mediation project coordinated over a period of close to three years by the impassioned team of Sophie Lessard-Latendresse (Head of art and well-being mediation, MNBAQ mediation department) and Justine Boulanger (Manager of digital education content, MNBAQ mediation department).
Being a public museum, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec belongs to all the citizens of Quebec. We felt that access to the collection should be available to all the people of Quebec. So we said to ourselves, ‘Okay, let’s see how far we can go’ […] We had a special attraction to Nunavik.
Accompanied by teacher Nathalie Claude, and in collaboration with the MNBAQ, students from Iguarsivik School offer their reinterpretation of ten works from the museum’s collection.
Works created by the students are hung in the Pierre Lassonde Pavilion over the entrance in the building’s main foyer. A short distance further, they are seen reproduced on a specially designed display. Here, Ivujivik student Velesie Adams has created a series of digital images illustrating the clash between pollution as it impacts the Arctic environment and the traditional activities that the Inuit carry out on the land.
The illustrations created by student Velesie Adams form a reflection on how pollution threatens the entire ecosystem in which the Inuit today go about their traditional activities on the land.
For Sophie Lessard-Latendresse, the exhibition of works by these young Inuit in a public space like the museum represents a powerful tool in the efforts of advocacy for both the Inuit and our museums.
This helps young Inuit to see that art can be a means of expression that they can use in their reflections on the issues that matter to them.
If you are in Quebec during the coming weeks, drop by the MNBAQ. The exhibit Tarratuutiq | Taima will be on display there until June 2, 2024.
Discover the artworks and find out what the students themselves have to say about them ➔
