New space in the Visual Arts building is ‘a place for experimentation’
Photo courtesy of the University of Victoria.
A unique collaboration space has just opened in the Visual Arts building at UVic. The Taqsiqtuut Research-Creation Lab is the newest project from Dr. Heather Igloliorte, UVic’s Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Decolonial and Transformational Indigenous Art Practices.
This Indigenous arts-based research space focuses on work with an artistic outcome, rather than producing a traditional paper or publication. The lab’s name, Taqsiqtuut, comes from the Inuktitut word for patterns and designs, reflecting the Indigenous knowledge and art practices at the site’s core.
According to a UVic news release, the lab is incorporating the key pillars of Igloliorte’s role as CERC: “developing digital skills, creating exhibitions, training and mentoring of students and youth, and developing new policies and best practices for institutions that engage with Indigenous art and artists.”
Prior to taking on her roles both as a professor in the Visual Arts Department, and the inaugural CERC in Decolonial and Transformational Indigenous Art Practices, Igloliorte was the Tier 1 University Research Chair in Circumpolar Indigenous Arts, as well as an associate professor at Concordia University.
While at Concordia, Igloliorte and her colleagues started what they referred to as “incubators” — creative spaces for artists working across different disciplines at various points in their careers. “The artists would produce new work by sharing skills with each other,” she explained in an interview with the Martlet. “We’d mash them together and see what they came up with in a concentrated period of time.”
Photo courtesy of the University of Victoria.
The Taqsiqtuut Lab was inspired by these creativity incubators. Igloliorte hopes this space will foster an exchange of ideas and artistic practices. “It’s a place for experimentation,” Igloliorte said. “[We’re] trying to transfer our current skills and knowledge and see how they translate into other disciplines.”
Igloliorte hopes this will be a space for creativity and experimentation, where students can be inspired by artists working in new and exciting ways, while “developing an appreciation for Indigenous peoples and their customary and contemporary art practices.”
Igloliorte felt that Victoria was an excellent location for this lab. “My research involves the circumpolar world and also the Pacific, so we’re kind of at a great intersection between those two places,” she told the Martlet.
Igloliorte’s research focuses on Indigenous arts and knowledge in international art contexts, with emphasis on Indigenous perspectives and creativity. For over a decade, Igloliorte has been working with a network of people in international circumpolar communities, as well as curators and artists in places like Australia, and Samoa. “It’s really exciting to be here, and be a little bit of a hub for where these things are happening,” she said.
The lab is run by full-time staff and students. “[The students] get to be involved in the research, they help to select workshops as well, [and] they have ideas for programming we can do. We’re very non-hierarchical in that way. We want to make sure that everyone’s voices are heard,” Igloliorte told the Martlet.
The lab had their official launch on Friday Feb. 28, which included art installations, panel discussions, and a film screening, along with a demonstration of Witness Blanket VR, a project by Carey Newman, UVic’s Impact Chair in Indigenous Art Practices and Visual Arts professor.
Photo courtesy of the University of Victoria.
The event was a huge success, according to Igloliorte. “It was incredible. I think we had the most people at a panel — certainly [the most] that I’ve ever seen.”
They also displayed Qiaqsutuq, a large digital media installation on climate change made by an Arctic Inuit group of artists. The installation included video, audio, and sixteen-foot sculptures; it was one of the many projects born from the same incubators which inspired the creation of the lab.
The Taqsiqtuut Lab is open to students and Indigenous community members, as well as visiting artists and scholars. “It’s not exclusively for Indigenous students,” Igloliorte said. “It’s for all students at the university and certainly anyone who fancies themselves an artist … but the knowledge that is at the centre of it all is going to be Indigenous knowledge.”
Igloliorte plans to have regularly scheduled workshops, activities, lectures, and drop-in sessions at the lab when the fall term begins, all of which will be free to attend.
“Some of [the activities] will be open to the UVic community, some of them will be for the public, some may be just for Indigenous peoples, and some might be just for a specific group,” she shared. Igloliorte added that as space is limited in the lab, the events will require registration.
“I think what’s really important is that people come away with a positive experience of the work,” Igloliorte said. “Success is not just in the quantitative data that we conduct, but really [in] the quality of the experience that people have.”
