West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative art exhibition in Warsaw opens to great response amid political turmoil – The Globe and Mail

Plumes of black smoke were rising from the Russian embassy in Warsaw on William Huffman’s last day in the city. “There’s a suspicion that they’re burning documents,” the Canadian curator said over the phone.

Huffman had travelled to Poland for reasons that had nothing to do with the war in neighbouring Ukraine. He was there to install an exhibition of Inuit art from Canada at the National Ethnographic Museum. New Inuit Art: Contemporary Art from Kinngait features work by the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative in Kinngait, or Cape Dorset, Nunavut. Huffman, who is not Indigenous, promotes the collective’s work from Toronto, where he is based.

After nearly two years of COVID-19-related delays, Huffman arrived in the city on March 2, less than a week after Russia invaded Ukraine, sending refugees – including artists – streaming into Poland.

“It’s been a very profound and troubling experience,” Huffman said from Warsaw in an interview last week. Even before he left Toronto, the invasion had him second-guessing whether he should go through with this exhibition he had curated. Would anybody care? Would putting on an art show at this time perhaps even make people angry?

But when he consulted people he trusts, what he heard was “you have to do this.”

The show features 34 works made in the last decade by members of the Cooperative, including Ningeosiaq Ashoona, Saimaiyu Akesuk, Shuvinai Ashoona (who has several works in the Venice Biennale’s central exhibition, beginning next month), Kudlu Kellipalik, Qavavau Manumie, Johnny Pootoogook, Palaya Qiatsuq, Pitseolak Qimirpik, Ooloosie Saila and Toonoo Sharky.

Manumie was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw two years ago as part of an exhibition called The Penumbral Age: Art in the Time of Planetary Change. Those works were donated to the museum, making them the first Canadian artworks to be included in its permanent collection. The interest in Manumie’s work ultimately led to the New Inuit Art exhibition, created in partnership with the Canadian embassy.

Shortly after Huffman arrived in Warsaw, a colleague suggested he visit the central train station. “You need to see this for yourself,” she said.

When he got there, he was shocked. The photos he discreetly took show people sleeping on the floors. So many children. A little play area had been set up with blankets laid out on the ground and a few toys.

“I left shaking,” he recalls. “It’s unbelievable.”

The Canadian embassy was busy welcoming refugees, including many children. A team was busy trying to locate relatives in Canada.

“Honestly there are times when I go to bed crying,” says Huffman.

Huffman was staying at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, a former castle that hosts arts events and artist residencies. A conference room became a supply station, with food being shuttled out to various shelters in the community.

There, refugees also began to arrive – artists from Ukraine, or their family members. Sometimes they would stop in, get some rest and food and move on. Others stayed longer. Some, Huffman became close with.

As Huffman’s ties deepened with some of these artists and their family members, so did his doubts about the exhibition. Again, he considered cancelling. But once more, he was encouraged to keep going – this time by the people he was working with in Warsaw. “Because it was a matter of doing something normal,” he says.

At the official opening on March 21, about 200 people showed up, the glitterati of Warsaw, as Huffman describes it. They sipped Canadian wine, dined on bison from the Prairies and admired the art: coloured pencil on paper drawings, a triptych of prints, serpentinite sculptures. During the speeches, there was an announcement that two works will be auctioned online to raise money for humanitarian aid for Ukraine.

Among those who attended: some of the Ukrainian refugees – the artists, their families. Late in the game, a decision was made to add Ukrainian wall plaques along with the English and Polish ones, and the large signs in Inuktitut syllabics.

The mother of Ukrainian artist Yulia Kostereva, one of the friends Huffman made at his residence, was among those who came. “And she grabs my arm and she says ‘beautiful, beautiful,’” recalls Huffman. “I had to excuse myself and go cry.”

It’s impossible not to consider the exhibition in the context of what is going on around it. Many people Huffman has taken through have been constantly checking their text messages, getting calls from people at the border. And so, he has been framing the work in this way.

“Let’s talk about: What are the commonalities in this work?,” he says. “If you look at the history of Inuit art and the history of the Inuit people, it’s all about resilience, all about identity. It’s all about preservation of history against all odds.” Like an invading power.

The show has received a great response, Huffman says – from the public, the Polish cultural community, the Ukrainian visitors. Back in Nunavut, the artists have also been moved, he says. “They’re like, it’s amazing that our show is in this place. We’re all brothers and sisters, right?”

Huffman was recounting all of this over the phone from Warsaw, a few days after the opening. He was having a hard time with the fact that he was getting on a plane the next day for Toronto and leaving it all behind. He was distracted by the plumes of smoke.

“I’m not in a middle of a war. I’m not being shelled. I’m not being chased around by a tank,” he says. “But you’re being empathetic, sympathetic. You’re trying to assist in any way you can, you’re hearing stories. They’re telling you because they want to share it.”

And now, back in Toronto, he wants to share the stories too.

New Inuit Art is at the National Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw until May 5.

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