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Part 8: Your Heart's in the Right Place, But

As part of the September 2020 Plymouth Art Weekender, we ran a heart casting workshop. Martin Frobisher was shot in the thigh in 1594 and died of an infection in Plymouth. His heart is buried at the Minster Church of St Andrew’s, Plymouth. In 2019, we were told by an artist in Canada that ‘I’m sure your heart’s in the right place, but…’

Turning hearts into door knockers keeps hearts in the right place, announcing the contemporary presence of Frobisher’s Nunavut invasion in the fabric of our lives.

Part 7: Our Sceptre

In August 2020 we participated in the Chale Wote Street Art Festival in Accra, Ghana. We installed a video of our Zoom performance and participated in a live event https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=3339484466088293&ref=search

Parts 4-6: Toronto-Ottawa-Iqaluit 2019

In July 2019, Kayle & Angela travelled to Canada for conversations & to develop work with Georgiana Uhlyarik (Art Gallery of Ontario https://ago.ca/people/georgiana-uhlyarik), Alysa Procida (Inuit Art Foundation https://www.inuitartfoundation.org/about/who-we-are), Bianca Gendreau and Karen Ryan (Canadian Museum of History https://www.historymuseum.ca/learn/research/), Janet Pitsiulaaq Brewster (NACA https://www.facebook.com/NunavutArtsandCraftsAssociation/), Christine Tootoo, Ellen Hamilton and Jamie Griffiths (Qaggiavuut! https://www.qaggiavuut.ca/en/about), Jessica Kotierk (Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum https://www.nunattasunakkutaangit.ca/), and Mathew Nuqingaq (https://www.facebook.com/mathewnuqingaqart).

We carried a narwhal tusk cast and one of the large pieces of amphibolite ore that we returned from the town walls of Dartford, Kent. These accompanied us on planes, trains, automobiles and were held by everyone we met, to finally be held by Nunavut Arts & Crafts Association for use by anyone who wishes to make work in response to these legacies. Our visit to the Canadian Museum of History focused on the excavations of Frobisher’s mines and camps at Kodlunarn Island (1576-78). In response, we made assemblages of the contemporary materials we collected on our journey.

We remain incredibly grateful for the warm hospitality everyone showed us, for the opportunity to be in Nunavut for Nunavut Day, and for the ongoing collaborations. We thank our funders (Canada-UK Foundation & University of Bristol) who made the trip possible.

Part 3: Wincester School of Art 2018

In November 2018, we were invited by Lady Lucy (Dr Lucy Woollett) to give a workshop to students on AUS and our approach to material practices. We explored the potential for using symbols of power to act back against coloniality within the art school curriculum and discussed how we, as mixed-background and displaced people, can work with these traces in ways that are ethically sound and artistically valuable.

Parts 1-2: Public Meeting, 20 October 2018

‘Coloniality is different from colonialism. Colonialism denotes a political and economic relation in which the sovereignty of a nation or a people rests on the power of another nation, which makes such a nation an empire. Coloniality, instead, refers to long-standing patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism, but that define culture, labor, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations.’

Nelson Maldonado-Torres. 2007. On the Coloniality of Being.

Cultural Studies 21 (2-3): 240-270

On 20 October 2018, at Arnolfini, from 10am-4.30pm, we met to acknowledge the ongoing legacy of the presence, in the autumn of 1577, of Kalicho, Arnaq and Nutaaq in Bristol. They were abducted from Nunavut by the English privateer, Martin Frobisher. Their story is how we continue to breathe coloniality. Cartography, navigation, bad faith, magic, alchemy, comets, land theft, shareholders, gold fraud – all still shape lives now.

As Seyer’s Annals of Bristol recorded:

1577. Captaine Frobisher in a ship of our queenes of the burden of 200 tonnes came into Kingrode from Cattai, who brought certaine oare from thence, which was esteemed to be very ritch and full of gowld….They brought likewise a man called Callicho and a woman named Ignorth. They were sauage people and fed only uppon raw flesh. The 9th. of October he rode in a little bote made of skinne in the water at the backe, where he killed 2 duckes with a dart, and when he had done carried his bote through the marsh upon his back. The like he did at the weare and other places, where many beheld him. He would hit a ducke a good distance of and not misse. They died here within a month.”

Our aim has been to unsettle – ourselves and others. What would it be to ask whether the city of Bristol is also an Inuit city? What would it be to ask whether Inuit communities also have claims to this city’s land and resources? What would it be to ask whether artistic responses to this history and its contemporary legacies can aid in the unsettling?

For this Open Meeting, works included Mark Igloliorte’s Study for Traditional Seal Skin Neck Pillow (2018) and mixed media work-in-progress of the Association of the Unknown Shore. Activities include talks, walks, narwhal tusk casting, underwater recording. We also screened Alethea Arnaquq-Baril’s film Angry Inuk (2016, NFB).