Erin Ggaadimits Ivalu Gingrich, Exhibit, September 2022
Erin Ggaadimits Ivalu Gingrich exhibits Allaŋŋuq at Bunnell Street Arts Center for the month of September. The opening is Friday, September 2, from 5-7pm, with an artist talk at 6pm.
Artist Statement:
“Allaŋŋuq elevates deep ancestral understanding of the power of wild non-human beings and the transformative power of adaptation to one’s environment.
Change is a natural element of the living world and it can occur hourly, daily, seasonally, through lifetimes and millennia. Natural beings adapt to these changes in the environment through transformations. Since time immemorial, my ancestors have studied how the wild beings of the nuna(land) here transform.”
Biography:
Erin Ggaadimits Ivalu Gingrich was raised in many wild places in Alaska within a family of Iñupiaq and Koyukon Athabascan artists. Her work connects with historically traditional beliefs stemming from her ancestors’ value for the natural environment as gifts gathered from the land. Ivalu’s experiences with Alaska’s biodiversity through the lens of sacred subsistence lifeways fundamentally shaped her understanding of the value of Alaska’s ecosystems as both an immeasurable entity, and a gatherable gift sustained over generations. To continue the practice of these beliefs, Ivalu’s work explores representations of these wild resources that make the environment unique through carved, painted, and beaded sculptural mask forms.
Ivalu completed a year of research at three Alaska Museums, and ten locations for Subsistence/land/wildlife/environmental research. Subsistence and land-based research for this project was conducted on the lands of the Indigenous peoples of: Kasilof, Cohoe -Girdwood, Russian River, Cantwell, Alaska Parks Highway, Nome, Nome-Teller Highway, Anchorage, Fairbanks
Visual research and object study for this project was conducted in museum collections and with assistance from the following institutions: Carrie M. McLain Memorial Museum
Nome, Alaska; University of Alaska Museum of the North, Ethnology & History Collections, Fairbanks, Alaska; The Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, Anchorage, Alaska; The Alaska SeaLife Center, Seward, Alaska.
This work is funded by The Native Arts and Culture Foundation’s LIFT – Early Career Support for Native Artists program.
Exhibit Opening: Friday, September 2, 2022 from 5 -7 pm, Artist talk at 6pm
