Art History and Visual Culture

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Cracking the Glass Ceiling: Contemporary Inuit Drawing
(2017-07-27) Campbell, Nancy Gay; Hudson, Anna
The importance of the artists voice in art historical scholarship is essential as we emerge from post-colonial and feminist cultural theory and its impact on curation, art history, and visual culture. Inuit art has moved from its origins as an art representing an imaginary Canadian identity and a yearning for a romantic pristine North to a practice that presents Inuit identity in their new reality. This socially conscious contemporary work that touches on the environment, religion, pop culture, and alcoholism proves that Inuit artists can respond and are responding to the changing realities in the North. On the other side of the coin, the categories that have held Inuit art to its origins must be reconsidered and integrated into the categories of contemporary art, Indigenous or otherwise, in museums that consider work produced in the past twenty years to be contemporary as such. Holding Inuit artists to a not-so-distant past is limiting for the artists producing art today and locks them in a history that may or may not affect their work directly. This dissertation examines this critical shift in contemporary Inuit art, specifically drawing, over the past twenty years, known as the contemporary period. The second chapter is a review of the community of Kinngait and the role of the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative in the dissemination of arts and crafts. Chapter three is a review of the literature in the field in of writing on Inuit art and exposes the dearth of material in this area of study. Chapters four and five are each Case Studies on two prominent female artists from Kinngait. Numerous key drawings of two third-generation Kinngait women, Shuvinai Ashoona and Annie Pootoogook, form the basis of each case study from which examples, analyses, and observations are based on the drawings and first person interviews. These women are critical in bringing the medium of drawing and contemporary renewed content to a larger audience. These two artists were chosen for in-depth analysis because their work has most dramatically bridged the solitudes of Inuit art and internationally recognized contemporary art. By focusing on these artists from Kinngait, I underscore the unbroken lineage between Ashoona and Pootoogooks ground-breaking contributions to what is known as the Dorset experiment, which first linked the market economy in the North to avant-garde art practice over fifty years ago. Chapter Six is an overview of the exhibition, criticism and dissemination of contemporary Inuit art, focusing on the period beginning in 1990. This chapter proposes a variety of scholarly voices in the field of exhibition and criticism, both Inuit, Indigenous and other. Conclusions are drawn in the final chapter that encourages the addition of Inuit voices to the discussion, rather than relegate the artists to the role of silent partners in a complicated trade agreement between the co-operative system, dealers, and middlemen.
Open Access
Decolonizing Nunavut's Art Market
(2019-11-22) Yunes, Erin Elizabeth; Hudson, Anna
An Indigenous methodological framework of decolonization and Indigenization must support an Inuit-led revitalization of the declining arts and crafts sector in Nunavut. Arts and crafts express oral tradition, personal narratives, and Inuit worldviews and transfer those values intergenerationally. As Inuit Elder Shirley Tagalik argues, the transmission of Inuit traditional knowledge (Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit) through artistic expression plays a vital role in communities by promoting a culturally healthy society that is key to Inuit survival. By fusing Indigenous cultural heritage and new media technologies to centralize artwork, storytelling, and worldviews, the Inuit futurisms movement is contesting the digital divide that sustains a persistent colonial narrative of Arctic history. Decolonizing and Indigenizing information and communication technologies (ICT) strengthens Inuit engagement in rewriting the past, controlling the dissemination of stories and traditional knowledge, and creating a unified vision of their future. Inuit leaders and representative organizations have been calling for federally supported Inuit-developed frameworks for advanced ICT innovation to meet the needs of communities. At issue is the question, How can community-first ICT policies and infrastructure disrupt the status quo of the declining colonial Inuit art market in Nunavut? First-mile infrastructure development and equitable high-speed broadband, which do not currently exist in the territory, are required to promote and support Inuit culture. By placing ownership and control of broadband infrastructure within Inuit communities and thus the arts economy decolonization, self-determination, cultural sovereignty, and Inuit-led economic advancement will occur in Nunavut. This dissertation explores how equitable, affordable, and accessible ICT innovation reinforced by community-first strategic development policies supports expansion in the Inuit art market. Only by positioning Nunavut at the forefront of ICT access will Indigenous Nunavummiut artists be able to leverage digital tools to create works, organize for collective action, and engage in global markets. Creative solutions designed by and for Inuit communities living in remote and isolated locations are ultimately essential for achieving growth in the Inuit arts and crafts sector in Nunavut.
Open Access
Invasive Species: The Naturalization of Settler Colonialism by Flowered Quilts in Southeastern Ontario During the Nineteenth Century (1820-1880)
(2021-11-15) Nicholas, Vanessa Kathleen; Hudson, Anna
Studying three embroidered quilts made by British women who lived in southeastern Ontario during the nineteenth century, this dissertation establishes that the floral designs typical of the homecrafts that British women transported to and made in nineteenth-century Canada express the same settler-colonial desires for authority and belonging that have been attributed to the historical North American landscape painting tradition produced by Western men. This is significant because it suggests that the seemingly mild-mannered decorative traditions of white women contributed to a visual and material culture that was hostile to Indigeneity. The three embroidered quilts within this study were made by Mary Morris (1811-1897), Elizabeth Bell (1824-1919), and Margaret McCrum (1847-1888), respectively. My research involved establishing the provenance and geographies of these quilts, tracing the history of their floral designs, and assessing their cultural meaning. I have found that some of the quilts embroideries make specific references to floral designs found in Indian, British, and Indigenous decorative arts, and that a select few have been inspired by Ontarios wildflowers and gardens. These quilts show that British women in nineteenth-century Ontario were invested in the consumption, study, and transformation of Canadian land. Rather than attributing malintent to Morris, Bell, and McCrum, I situate their homecrafts within a broader cultural context and detail the political dimensions of their artistic references. I characterize these three quilts as belonging to an invasive species. Several species of European plants and animals have become successful colonizers in Canada, including the common dandelion and house sparrow. As a metaphor, these species represent the slow, steady course of settler-colonialism and its ultimate aim, to appear, feel, and act natural in a foreign environment. In Canada, this end depended upon the transplantation or deterritorialization of Indigenous peoples because the settler-colonial imaginary took root in a mythology of an untouched wilderness. This dissertation treats the floral embroideries produced by three British women as specimens within the broader invasive species of Western culture that has incessantly asserted its perceived entitlement to Canadian land.
Open Access
Refashioning Duchamp: An Analysis of the Waistcoat Readymade Series and other Intersections of Art and Fashion
(2019-11-22) Mida, Ingrid Erica; Gammel, Irene; Hudson, Anna
French-American artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) is best known as the iconoclastic author of the readymade. In spite of the vast corpus of scholarship dedicated to his oeuvre, the artists preoccupation with clothing has remained virtually unexamined and yet, as this dissertation argues, is of central importance to our understanding of the readymade. Using art historical considerations of the readymade, along with theories of fashion, identity construction, and curation, this dissertation presents a case for reconsidering Duchamps oeuvre with a focus on clothing to answer a central research question: What ultimately is the difference between a Duchamp readymade and an object of fashion exhibited in a museum? The answer, I argue, emerges by bringing the concepts of fashion studies and curatorial studies into a dialogue with Duchamps readymade. Specifically, this dissertation explores (1) Duchamps under-explored series of early drawings that reveal the artists profound interest in the clothed body; (2) Duchamps fashioning of his public self through clothing and photography that circulated widely in the mass media and more privately in avant-garde circles; (3) Duchamps waistcoat readymades Made to Measure (1957-1961) that expand the boundaries of the readymade into clothing; and (4) Duchamps use of fashion in his exhibition designs for the Surrealists in 1938 and 1942. By focusing on the material traces of Duchamps fashioning of his body and identity in his work, this dissertation argues that Duchamps use of clothing profoundly disrupts the notion that art cannot be worn. By exploring Duchamps use of clothing as art, this study advances scholarly knowledge at the intersections of art history and fashion studies, considering also the dynamic engagement of gender and the body in the vanguard of Modernism.

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