EXHIBITION (RE!)OPENING: Àbadakone continues post Covid-19 lockdown at the National Gallery of Canada

The National Gallery of Canada (NGC) reopens this weekend with FREE admission today and tomorrow. Along with the opening, Àbadakone | Continuous Fire | Feu continuel has been extended beyond it’s originally closing date in April and will now run again from July 23 – October 4.

For the official launch of Àbadakone last November, I wrote an article for the NGC’s Gallery Magazine that looked back at the first iteration of their International Indigenous art exhibition, Sakahàn. In Inspired Gathering: the International Indigenous Art of Àbadakone I revisted what took root at that time to be carried forward into the next edition of the exhibition series that brings together Indigenous artists from around the globe.

As the exhibition is set to have it’s (re!)opening, I have written another article for Gallery Magazine. Published on Thursday, July 16, the piece focuses on the work of artist Evgeniy Salinder and the conversation I had with Evgeniy shortly after the Lockdown begin. We met during the opening Fall 2019 and I was struck by his work. I wanted to know more about how his Nenets culture informed his practice and aesthetic. For this article, I had a chance to find out.

Visiting the exhibition before the Gallery’s closure due to COVID-19, I was pulled into their miniature world and was intrigued watching other visitors drawn into the work in the same way. At a moment when grand installations are the trend, it was refreshing to lean in close and linger on works small enough in scale to make it possible to take in all the details rendered by the artist’s hands.

I am excited that I will be able to visit his pieces yet again and that others as well will continue to have a chance to experience his exquisite work.

Read the full article Lay of the Land: A Conversation with Nenets Artist Evgeniy Salinder here.

ABOVE IMAGE: Work by Evgeniy Salinder, Self-portrait, image by Leah Snyder.