Paper Short Abstract:

This paper engages the work of contemporary Inuit artists from Kinngait to think about the ways in which art has historically documented and responded to local coastal sea ice change within the community and more broadly the impact climate change is having on the art-making of the community.

Paper Abstract:

For many Arctic communities and ecosystems, one of the most impactful consequences of climate warming is the deterioration of coastal sea ice which forms along the Arctic coastline during winter and spring. Further, the experience of sea ice, siku, and the floe edge, sinaaq, varies among local communities. And yet, it is the highly localised and complex nature of the floe edge that has often precluded detailed research into changes to coastal sea ice at community scales. Since the founding of the Kinngait Studios (part of the West Baffin Co-operative, Nunavut) in 1959, countless artists have visually documented sea ice in and beyond the community. Drawings and prints made by Inuit artists and printmakers have, over the past 65 years, engaged with the materiality of sea ice and the important role it plays in facilitating access to the land and open sea. As ice formation becomes increasingly unpredictable, its role and importance within local image-making is similarly evolving. Conscious of Ursula K. Heise’s imperative to consider that local “cultural and ecological systems are imbricated in global ones”, with this paper I engage the work of contemporary Inuit artists from Kinngait to think about the ways in which art has historically documented and responded to local coastal sea ice change within the community and more broadly the impact climate change is having on the art-making of south Qikiqtaaluk.