Temperate Movements: Artistic Responses to Climate Vulnera-Bility in the Canadian Arctic

Abstract: ‘Temperate movements: Artistic Responses to Climate Vulnerability in the Canadian Arctic’ uses examples and methodologies from contemporary art and theory to think through the impact and legacy of Arctic Sea ice melt upon Inuit culture. Here, the work of Inuit artists Eldred Allen and Maureen Gruben illustrates how melting Arctic Sea ice maybe considered as relational space best understood through a cultural, rather than an exclusively scientific and data-oriented relationship to global sea rise level. Such a cultural perspective, which emphasizes the interconnection between humans, animals, and the environment, can counter dominant climate change imagery which tends to homogenize and de-socialize the Arctic as a single concept. The work of these Inuit artists is also considered as outreach to non-Inuit communities, both in terms of photographic art forms circulating in ‘southern’ contemporary art contexts, as well as becoming ‘novel’ indexes of climate vulnerability and resilience.