Maureen Gruben

Description of the exhibition

In Nuna (2023), meaning “land” in Inuvialuktun, Maureen Gruben engages in a physical act of collaboration with the ice by deploying a large red broadcloth across the land. While her other work, notably Stitching My Landscape, used fabric to connect one hundred and eleven ice-fishing holes, this time she reconfigures it in the form of a large red cross that she leaves on the ice for two months. Gruben shifts the thread of the dancing stitch to the weight of a cross, embedded in melting ice, evoking the universal symbol of aid as an urgent call to action for the present climate disaster, which is deeply felt by the Inuvialuit community.

Artist biography

MAUREEN GRUBEN

(Born and lives in Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, Canada)

Maureen Gruben is an Inuvialuk artist who often incorporates organic and industrial materials salvaged from the Arctic, where she lives, into her multidisciplinary practice. Through her work, she draws links between the land and the communities that inhabit it, often exploring notions of environmentalism, the thawing of permafrost, and Indigenous hunting rights. Her work has been shown across Canada and internationally and is in many museum collections in Canada.