Puilanerit / Grafisk Værksted 1972–1980, Nuuk Art Museum, Nuuk
In a box at the Greenland National Museum & Archives rests an important part of Greenland’s art history. Greenland’s first art school was established in 1972, initially acting as a graphic workshop (grafisk værksted) before becoming Eqqumiitsuliornermik Ilinniarfik – The Greenland Art School. At the time, works were collected from the students, placed in boxes, and saved for posterity. They had never been exhibited or subjected to close study. That’s why it gave me chills when, during my maternity leave, I entered the exhibition Puilanerit (which means wellspring/spring of water) and saw the explosive start of recent Greenlandic visual art. Featuring more than seventy artists, it abounded with graphics of high visual and technical quality. Those rooms and those works have stayed with me.
New Red Order Presents: One if by Land, Two if by Sea, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen
Full disclosure: I never saw this exhibition. When you live in Nuuk, Copenhagen is far away. Denmark and the Nordic countries are steeped in colonial connections that criss-cross everywhere. In the buildings, at the ports and harbours, in the attics, in city names, in the economic systems, in people, in national borders, in museum archives, and much more. Exhibitions that make visible and criticise such colonial connections deserve to be seen. The colonial critique presented by the public secret society New Red Order and the artists featured in its exhibition deserves to be heard.
Atlantikumi // In the Atlantic Ocean, Nuuk Art Museum and North Atlantic House, Nuuk and Copenhagen
Seeing Jessie Kleemann, Pia Arke, and Jeannette Ehlers in the same space has been a long-held dream. Each artist works with colonial histories as ubiquitous and still current. And their works are so personal and universal, so powerful and so tender, each in their different ways. They complemented each other from opposite sides of the oceans, finding a meeting place in the middle of the Atlantic. The experience of being surrounded by their works, surrounded by the lapping of the Atlantic Ocean, was, to me, a decisive visualisation of the crucial role played by the sea for the colonies.
Nivi Christensen is director at the Nuuk Art Museum in Greenland / Kalaallit Nunaat. She is a trained art historian specialising in art from Greenland, an author, and curator of a number of exhibitions featuring art from Greenland, presented in Denmark, Greenland and the rest of the world.
For this year’s contributions to Kunstkritikk’s Advent Calendar, see here.
