Northern Aboriginal art works ignored at Edmonton festival

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OPINION

In the crush of arts exhibits that form Edmonton's The Works visual arts festival, it is not surprising that some shows get overlooked. After all, some 75 exhibits with works by 800 artists compete for people's attention.

Still, something's not right when the festival's feature exhibit get lost in the shuffle. Such as the case with Arts From the Arctic, some 150 examples of contemporary Aboriginal art from Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Alaska, Canada and Greenland.

The exhibit attracted next to no audience, but it wasn't because of the quality of the work - artworks both beautiful and surprising.

The art ranged from the traditional to the more modern. Abraham Ruben, from B.C.'s Saltspring Island, showed an expressive, haunting face carved from whalebone and horn.

In contrast, Seattle's Lawrence Aklak Beck displayed his starting Punk Musk Ox-Spirit, a contemporary take on mask-making made from chrome, bike handlebars and pink feathers.

Yet no one appeared to take the time to look at the art, perhaps because the show was shoved into a tawdry, ill-lit space in the basement of Edmonton Centre.

There, these proud artworks sat forlorn in cases on a dirty tiled floor across from a hamburger outlet. Rather than a highlight of the festival, the art works were reduced to a collection of curios in a mall.

It is ironic that in the catalog for last year's show at The Works, Canada's First people, Alberta Part Art president John Lunn noted: "...exhibition curators have sometimes found it difficult to ensure that the art of other Indigenous cultures get the attention it deserves."

While The Works is commended for its continuing efforts to program Native art,

it missed the boat this year by marginalizing Arts From The Arctic to a poor space and not according the artists and their art the respect they deserve.