Baker Lake Artists Today - Richard D. Mohr

This fast-paced 20-minute English-language PowerPoint presentation offers an ethnographic, aesthetic, and cultural analysis of the current art scene in Baker Lake. At the end of August 2018, I visited the hamlet for a week, during which I variously hung out with and formally interviewed a dozen artists, spanning three generations. The stars of the presentation are Tony Anguhalluq, Fanny Avitituq, Abraham Iksiraq, Phillipa Iksiraq, and William Noah.

The presentation wears its theory lightly, but on the aesthetic front, it offers support for formal and cultural studies approaches to Inuit art criticism over the prevailing biographical and story-telling based ones.

On the ethnographic front, it turns out that current artistic practices in Baker Lake reflect and are hampered by an unease marbled through the local culture. Here joy and glory float shakily on a sea of discontent and dysfunction. But the presentation ends on a rising arc by suggesting that Jessie Oonark’s life offers a model for navigating the shoals of modern hybrid culture.