This spring, Mimosa House will present Nuliaminik Neqilik (The Flesh of Wives), an exhibition of Greenlandic-Canadian Inuk artist Laakkuluk Williamson’s new and recent works. Nuliaminik Neqilik will be Laakkuluk’s first solo exhibition of visual work, which will subsequently tour to Nuuk Art Museum, Greenland and SAW Centre, Canada. This exhibition is curated by Taqralik Partridge, an Inuk curator and artist who is known for her community and family-based approach to working with Inuit and other circumpolar artists.
Nuliaminik Neqilik speaks to the current international discourse on Inuit identity, repatriation, and agency over belongings, bodies and territories; making this an even more timely and urgent project while the world’s eyes are on Greenland and the circumpolar region. The artist and curator have described Nuliaminik Neqilik as being a small revolutionary act in that it will be presented in a coloniser’s country and close to The British Museum, an institution whose history is bound up with colonial power and expansion. Bringing the exhibition to Nuuk will be a homecoming for the artist and her work, as her maternal family is originally from Maniitsoq, Greenland.
The exhibition’s title and central piece of work – a mixed media installation Nuliaminik Neqilik – comes from a Greenlandic story of Igimaarasussuaq, a cannibal who ate the flesh of his wives, and the revenge of his last wife Masaannaaq, who grew to an immense size. In this new work, Laakkuluk champions the voice of Masaannaaq as an emancipated protagonist. Colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism and racism subjugate, dehumanise and exclude racialised women. In Nuliaminik Neqilik, Laakkuluk focuses on corpulence, body image and strength as a way to own space.
On loan from the National Gallery of Canada for the exhibition, will be Nannuppugut!, which translates as “We killed a polar bear!”. This work takes its name from Laakkuluk’s family’s real-life encounter with a polar bear.
This exhibition was developed with the support of SAW’s Nordic Lab initiative, a research and production space in Ottawa, Canada, dedicated to artists from circumpolar nations.
Public Programme
24 April - Performance by Laakkuluk at the British Museum 6:30PM
Free and open to all, no booking required - please congregate in the great court of the British Museum opposite the entrance to the library.
This exhibition is supported by; Canada Council for the Arts, York University, CICCS, SAW, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Musagetes
Mimosa House is supported by; Arts Council England and The Garfield Weston Foundation
