Consequences of contact First solo show in WAG-Qaumajuq’s flagship Qilak gallery By: Eva Wasney Posted: 2:47 PM CDT Friday, May. 23, 2025

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This article was published 23/05/2025 (521 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Since his last gallery show in Winnipeg, Abraham Anghik Ruben’s focus has shifted from introspection to cross-cultural exploration.

That personal and artistic arc is currently on display at WAG-Qaumajuq in a sprawling retrospective of the master Inuit sculptor’s 50-year career.

It’s a fitting full-circle reunion.

The Winnipeg Art Gallery hosted Ruben’s first solo show at a major institution in 2001 and now, nearly 25 years later, the artist’s work is featured in the first solo exhibit in Qaumajuq’s main Qilak gallery.

“It’s marvellous. This is a grand hall; I think this is going to be an incredible showcase for years to come,” Ruben says while standing in the vast Inuit art centre, which opened in 2021.

He’s surrounded by a flock of mythical Inuit figures and Norse gods etched in soapstone and bone, bronze and wood. The luminous, lifelike sculptures make up the bulk of an exhibit containing more than 100 pieces that tell an abridged version of the artist’s fascinating life.

A soft-spoken storyteller, Ruben, 73, was born in a camp near Paulatuk, N.W.T, and spent his early years with family, living off the land and migrating with the seasons.

As children, he and his siblings were taken from their parents, Billy and Bertha Ruben, and made to attend residential school — a traumatic experience that later led him to artmaking.

Ruben returned north to study art at the University of Alaska and began sculpting in 1975 as a way to reclaim his Inuvialuit culture.

Today, he’s a member of the Order of Canada and a world-renowned contemporary artist whose work has been exhibited at the Louvre and Smithsonian.

“I also do prospecting as much as I do sculpting,” says the resident of Salt Spring Island, adding he has mining claims for outcroppings of jade and rare metals in British Columbia’s interior.

“The artwork has helped me continue prospecting. Now we’re now getting to the point where prospecting can take the artwork to a different level.”

Looking at the complex, large-scale work he’s created thus far, it’s hard to fathom what the next level might entail.

Ruben’s first show at the WAG, curated by Darlene Coward Wight, was largely autobiographical, with paintings, prints and smaller sculptures depicting personal and ancestral history.

The Abraham Anghik Ruben exhibit starts in a similar place and highlights the mystical seafaring journey his art practice has taken since 2004, when a cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment — which he refers to as “getting nuked” — inspired him to investigate the overlap between Inuit and Viking history.

“There’s very little written about it. I realized the Inuit and the Viking people must have had extensive contact, so I started developing works that were based on this,” Ruben says.

“It’s my interpretation of what may have happened: contact between two very different Arctic people, but there are a lot of common elements.”

As examples, he points to the similarities in spiritual beliefs, legendary storytelling and shamanistic traditions of both groups.

There are documented interactions on Greenland during the 13th century, but Ruben believes the relationship runs deeper than described in the written record.

Sculptures of the Inuit sea goddess Senda mingle with imagery of the Norse sea goddess Rán — both feared and revered female archetypes. Odin and Loki appear beside creatures from Inuit creation stories. Umiak vessels traverse the high seas alongside Viking longships.

A carved wooden pillar entitled The Beginning — the working model for a future bronze sculpture — is one of the newest pieces in the gallery and contains nearly all the elements above in a tall, twisting vignette.

Ruben calls this body of work “the consequences of contact”; it also features commentary on colonization and modern day climate change.

Guest curator Heather Campbell, an Inuit artist from Nunatsiavut (Northern Labrador), got goosebumps when she saw the finished exhibition for the first time after working on it virtually for the last year.

“It can’t prepare you for seeing it in person. They’re all facing you, welcoming you,” she says of the crowd of human and animal sentinels greeting visitors at the entrance of the Qilak gallery.

The pieces for the show were sourced from private, public and corporate collections, as well as from 30 Ruben originals in the WAG’s permanent collection, which includes the soft limestone sculpture of a mother bear and her cubs, titled Time to Play, that sits in front of Qaumajuq.

Campbell hopes gallery-goers appreciate the boundary-pushing qualities of Ruben’s work.

“Inuit art is very diverse and Abraham is one of those key examples of what’s possible. He strikes the perfect balance between abstract and realism,” she says.

Stephen Borys, the WAG’s director and CEO, agrees.

“One of the things I really appreciate and respect about Abraham and his art, is his curiosity and the way he’s never been afraid to experiment, to try new mediums, to try new techniques,” he says.

Visitors will be able to hear Ruben’s storytelling first-hand via audio recordings throughout the gallery.

“He’s able to bridge that gap between telling a story with an artwork and telling it in his own voice,” Campbell says.

“Most of the pieces are intriguing on their own, but once you read about them and learn about them, it truly enhances what’s there.”

Abraham Anghik Ruben opens tonight with a free public celebration from 7 to 10 p.m. in the gallery’s main hall.

eva.wasney@winnipegfreepress.com