Visionary Speaker Series: Curating Visions of the Arctic, Past and Present

Visionary Speaker Series: Curating Visions of the Arctic, Past and Present

Speaker: Mark A. Cheetham

For centuries, visitors to the circumpolar Arctic have had difficulty seeing and understanding its people, fauna, and especially land and sea. The region was just too different, too removed from southern and Western norms. Yet ironically, this ‘invisibility’ promoted a compensatory abundance of images made by Western travellers in an increasingly expansive range of media. Today, the polar regions are increasingly in focus as the locales of rapid climate disruption and its planetary repercussions. There is evidence that the Arctic is again—or still—pictured obsessively. This presentation by Mark Cheetham expands upon reflections of the Arctic. Drawing on his current experience curating two exhibitions on Arctic images, Mark Cheetham will share the value in comparing early and contemporary picturing of this region.

The talk resonates in conjunction with three recent exhibitions held at the Gallery by artists of Inuit ancestry: Couzyn van Heuvelen: CAMP, Billy Gauthier: Sila and Kathleen Daly: Northern Exposures Revisited. Through their work these artists revealed an intense relationship with the land of the north. Expanding upon what is a primary experience on their part, they brought to light the need to pay attention to this land and protect it.

Mark A. Cheetham is the author of books, volumes, articles, and exhibitions on abstract art, Immanuel Kant and art history, postmodernism, and many contemporary artists. His current research and curating focus on ecological art and word-image interfaces in 19th-century publications on Arctic voyaging. He recently curated 'Ideas of Far North' at Cowley-Abbott in Toronto and is preparing the exhibition 'Arctic Fever: Image and Narrative in North Circumpolar Voyaging in the long 19th Century'. Cheetham is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Clark Art Institute Fellow, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto.

Mark A. Cheetham bio photo, courtesy of the speaker.

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