Isuma to represent Canada on the world stage

From left: Norman Cohn, Pauloosie Qulitalik, Lizzie Qulitalik, Mary Qulitalik, Rachel Uyarashuk, Jonah Uyarashuk and Zacharias Kunuk, on the set of Nunaqpa (Going Inland), in 1990. (IMAGE COURTESY OF ISUMA)

Isuma, Nunavut’s famed art-film collective, will represent Canada at one of the world’s most prestigious art exhibitions next year in Venice, Italy.

The group’s video-based artwork will be featured at the Canadian pavilion at the 58th International Art Exhibition, or Venice Biennale, between May and November 2019.

It will be the first time Inuit art will be featured in the Canadian pavilion, which has showcased the work of many famous Canadian visual artists over the past 60 years.

Isuma, founded by Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn, is best known as the video-production company that created Anatarjuat, The Fast Runner, a film that went on to win the Caméra d’Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

“Since the mid-1990s the Isuma collective has been challenging stereotypes about ways of life in the North and breaking boundaries in video art, including the first video-based work to win a major film award at the prestigious Cannes film festival,” said Marc Mayer, CEO of the National Gallery of Canada, in a statement. Mayer is part of the panel of experts that chose Isuma.

“Isuma’s participation in Venice also marks the first presentation of art by Inuit in the Canada Pavilion. I am convinced that the international art world will be inspired by the insights that Kunuk and Cohn’s collaborative work will elicit at the next Venice Biennale.”

Visual artists featured in the Canadian pavilion in the past include Emily Carr, David Milne, Jean Paul Riopelle, Alex Colville, Guido Molinari, Michael Snow, General Idea, Geneviève Cadieux, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Rebecca Belmore, David Altmejd, Shary Boyle and Geoffrey Farmer.

Isuma started in the mid 1980s, when Kunuk received a Canada Council for the Arts grant to produce an Inuktitut-language video to portray traditional Inuit life in the 1930s and 1940s. Kunuk directed, while Cohn served as cameraman. Isuma’s earlier works were aided by two other partners, Paul Apak as editor, and Pauloosie Qulitalik, who ensured the the cultural authenticity of their films. Both men have since passed away.

Following the breakout success of Anatarjuat, The Fast Runner, Isuma went on to produce the feature films The Journals of Knud Rasmussen and Before Tomorrow. The group also created IsumaTV, a website for Indigenous video art, and has helped support Artcirq, Igloolik’s circus troupe.

Recent work by Isuma includes the feature drama Maliglutit (Searchers), the TV series Hunting With My Ancestors, and the first Haida-language feature film, Edge of the Knife, which is currently in progress.