Niap: Reclamation and De-Categorization

The Marion Scott Gallery is pleased to announce a new exhibition by Niap. Deriving from the same impulse that has led the Montreal-based Inuit artist to reclaim the customary practice of using mononyms, Niap’s new body of work is a symbolic reclamation of traditional Inuit lands achieved through the act of painting directly onto photographs of those lands.

In a performative act of abstract expressionistic painting, Niap invigorates the mid- and large-scale black and white prints – acquired from Robert Fréchette, a photographer of northern landscapes – through the application of vibrant splashes of colour and patterns that overturn any romantic ideas about the sombre vastness of the distant landscape that the images in their original monochrome state may convey. Niap’s actions assert that there is an intensely brilliant and thoroughly contemporary life in the traditional territories now being reclaimed by the Nunavimmiut.