The first Kunngi painting I have seen that I can stomach, from Arts from the Arctic exhibition catalogue. His paintings are all abstracted, vaguely surreal. I went to his big exhibition opening at Nordatlantens Brygge in Copenhagen in the spring - where they had the national choir performing so you know it is also a major state event  and honestly I do not like the mix of the same biomorphic shapes and colours with the ultra-sleek, graphic-y painting style he has adopted. But he is one of those ‘big deal’ people.

Inuk Silis Høegh, The Top of the Iceberg, 2009. Reposting this because I still think it is so cool. Printed fabric and scaffolding turn the edge of Nordatlantens Brygge in Copenhagen - which houses a cultural centre for Northatlantic (Greenlandic, Icelandic, Faroese) arts, the Greenlandic and Faroese Representative Offices, the Icelandic Embassy and was a historic point of trade in Denmark from the outlying regions - into an iceberg. Inuk’s performance/installation Melting Barricades also followed this theme of bringing the Brygge into its own realm and emphasizing separateness of the cultures it represents from Denmark. But while Melting Barricades was militant and asserting a complete breakaway - turning centuries of feeling foreign within one’s own country around to the colonizer - the Iceberg is more peaceful and meditative, as if it drifted into central Copenhagen from the Arctic and carries with it burdens of geographic, climatic and cultural messages but never actively settling on one, and merely prompts viewers to make their own associations.

Kollegium in Sisimiut (top and left), designed by TNT Nuuk architects.  Although I must admit it is a bit reminiscent of famous Tietgen kollegium designed by Bjarke Ingels Group, which incidentally is where I stayed with a student friend when last in Copenhagen.  But to be fair Sisimiut’s is a lovely amphitheater shape and not completely round.

Inuk Silis Høegh, Melting Barricades, performance and exhibition at Nordatlantens Brygge.  Here Inuk imagines a Denmark in Greenland’s place, occupied by a foreign nation.  It seeks to contextualize the ways in which Danish policy has sought to exploit Greenland’s vulnerabilities - such as the isolation between communities making communication difficult - and strategic advantages - mostly its geographic location, between to the US, Russia and Western Europe (which is the main reason Denmark holds a seat on the NATO Security Council, making any desire to keep Greenland within Denmark a highly militarized/politicized opinion) - by reversing the roles.