Anna Karpinski and Peter

Wilkins: 10 & 60

April 1st marked the 10th anniversary of the creation of Nunavut, and March 31st the 60th anniversary of Newfoundland and Labrador’s joining to Canada. This year, both anniversaries have been met with a mixture of expectation and scepticism.

Hopes were plentiful when the new Inuit homeland, Nunavut, was created. Although celebrating the creation of a new self-government within Canada, it remains clear that socio-economic progress in the eastern Arctic has been stubbornly slow. Newfoundland and Labrador famously held no celebrations on the day of its anniversary, perhaps indicative of its unique history in which Nationalist passions wax and wane.

Anna Karpinski’s photographs of individuals in Nunavut are mundane, yet poignant expressions. They show a hybrid of reality and traditional—a parka, and a knuckle tattoo.

Peter Wilkins, as with Karpinksi, gives a nod to the concept of regionalism. His “kinetic portraits” portray prominent Newfoundlanders with a sense of lived reality, a naturalness to the individual that is not usually seen. Through video, the viewer examines the individuals’ expressions in “the in-between moments”—thinking about a question, adjusting their seat.

Exploring a subliminal regionalism definable simply as “local life,” Anna Karpinski and Peter Wilkins eliminate the myths and stereotypes of a people to examine a particular knowledge of a place.

The exhibition is curated by Mireille Eagan.

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