Musée du quai Branly shows Eskimo and Inuit Arts

Tuesday, 30 September 2008 23:58

PARIS - The “Upside Down”, The Arctic Peoples exhibition offers visitors an unprecedented experience: the chance to explore, for the first time in Europe, the full range of Eskimo and Inuit arts, with the emphasis on a journey around the icecap, from Siberia to Alaska, with the Ekven, Dorset and Yup’ik civilisations, among others, as our points of reference. On exhibition 30 September through 11 January, 2009 at Musée du quai Branly, Paris.

The modern-day indigenous peoples of the Arctic region, widely known as Eskimos, do not belong to a uniform culture. They are in fact constituted of different groupings with diverse heritages populating the vast regions of Arctic lands and southern Arctic. However, they in general belong to one of the following ancestral branches: the Yupiget of Siberia, the Yupiit (plural of Yup’ik) of southern Alaska, the Inupiat of northern Alaska and the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic and Greenland.

The exhibition brings together around 500 of the most important pieces from ancient Eskimo and Inuit culture, giving visitors an exceptional overview of the various Eskimo and Inuit cultures and Arctic landscapes. Visitors are for instance invited to explore works from Ekven culture, pieces from the Bering Sea and around a hundred Ipiutak objects.

Conceived by Edmund Carpenter, cinematographer and specialist in Canadian and Siberian Arctic anthropology, this exhibit offers the visitor a novel experience: the discovery, for the first time in Europe, of the totality of Eskimo arts. It invites one to take a voyage around the entire icecap, from Siberia to Alaska, where the civilizations (Evenk, Dorset, Kushkokwin, etc.) are just so many points of reference. Doug Wheeler, an American artist who was a  pioneer in the “Light and Space” movement created the Exhibit’s setting. Jean de Gastines’ signature scenography incorporates the Gallery’s curves, which were designed by Jean Nouvel, as a course that runs through white landscapes, with no orthogonality, from the North Pole.

The curator and artistic director opted to not offer any commentary for visitors during the course of the Upside Down –  Arctic exhibit. A brochure will be supplied, for free. It contains a map that looks like it was created with freehand drawings and which summarizes one’s trajectory inside of the exhibit’s Arctic space. This mini-guide will act as the guide for to carrying out this adventure throughout this ice-covered land…

As one leaves the exhibit, they will see a single sign that will show a list of loaners, as well as credits for those who created the production. Any needed information will be supplied by the catalogue, which can be consulted upon exiting the exhibit, at a point separate from the bookstore, in the Garden Gallery.

Visit the Musée du quai Branly at : http://www.quaibranly.fr/en/accueil/index.html