Join us for the Toronto opening of ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home, an Indigenous-led exhibition organized by and first presented at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal. The exhibition will be on view in the Architecture and Design Gallery at 1 Spadina Crescent from October 25, 2023 – March 22, 2024.

The opening event will feature remarks from the co-curators and a performance by artist Geronimo Inutiq. Light refreshments will be served.

ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home was co-curated by Joar Nango (a Norway-based Sámi architect and artist), Taqralik Partridge (Associate Curator, Indigenous Art - Inuit Art Focus, Art Gallery of Ontario), Jocelyn Piirainen (Associate Curator, National Gallery of Canada) and Rafico Ruiz (Associate Director of Research at the CCA). The exhibition showcases installations by Indigenous designers and artists, reflecting on how Arctic Indigenous communities relate to land and create empowered, self-determined spaces of home and belonging.

The Daniels Faculty presentation of ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home is organized by Jeannie Kim, Associate Professor, Teaching Stream. The exhibition was originally mounted by the CCA and co-curated by Joar Nango (Sámi architect and artist), Taqralik Partridge (Associate Curator, Indigenous Art–Inuit Art Focus, Art Gallery of Ontario), Jocelyn Piirainen (Associate Curator, Indigenous Ways and Decolonization, National Gallery of Canada) and Rafico Ruiz (Associate Director of Research at the CCA). 

Born 1979 in Alta, Norway, Joar Nango is a Sámi architect and artist living in Norway. Nango’s work investigates nomads’ conceptions of space, territory and ideas of home. He focuses on different ways of dealing with materiality, movement and space.

Taqralik Partridge is an artist, writer and curator originally from Kuujjuaq, Nunavik. Previously the director of the Nordic Lab at SAW Gallery in Ottawa, where she brought together artists from across the circumpolar world to collaborate and create new work, she is currently Associate Curator, Indigenous Art–Inuit Art Focus at the Art Gallery of Ontario. She is also an adjunct curator at the Art Gallery of Guelph, where she is working on a series of exhibitions on the theme of Qautamaat/Everyday. Her mixed-media textile works have toured Canada and overseas and have been seen at the Owens Art Gallery (Sackville, NB) and at Mimosa House (London, UK).

Jocelyn Piirainen is an urban Inuk originally from Iqaluktuuttiaq, Nunavut. Previously the Associate Curator of Inuit Art at the Winnipeg Art Gallery and Qaumajuq, she is now Associate Curator, Indigenous Ways and Decolonization at the National Gallery of Canada. A graduate of Carleton University, Piirainen was educated primarily in the arts, particularly in film and new media. When not working as a curator, she works with analog photography and film in her artistic practice—mostly experimenting with Polaroids and Super 8 film—and hones her crochet and beading skills. She has contributed to publications such as Canadian Art, Canadian Geographic and Inuit Art Quarterly.

Rafico Ruiz is a settler (Northwestern Ontario/Ecuador) researcher and curator. His work addresses infrastructure building in the Arctic, post–global warming ice, and practices of settler accountability. Ruiz is the author most recently of Slow Disturbance: Infrastructural Mediation on the Settler Colonial Resource Frontier and the co-editor (with Melody Jue) of Saturation: An Elemental Politics, both published by Duke University Press. He is also the Associate Director of Research at the CCA.

Photomontage: Nicole Luke, Arctic Buildings, Nunavut, 2021. © Nicole Luke