Ruben's mother, Bertha (Thrasher) Ruben, was Yup'ik and of Portuguese-African descent from Alaska. Ruben's maternal great-grandparents, Apakark and Kagun, were Yup'ik Alaskan shamans from the Bering Sea region.[4][Notes 1] When the American whaling ships left, Apakark and Kagun moved to the Inuvik Region, along with the families of Ruben's paternal grandfather Ruben Anghik and maternal grandfather Billy Thrasher.[2]
Fifteen of Bertha Ruben's sixteen children survived, which is a very high survival rate in the Arctic. Bertha raised the children as Christians. She was a storyteller and also kept traditional teachings alive.[2] Like most Inuit women, she was a seamstress.[2]
The children's father, William Ruben, also known as Billy Ruben, was named Esoktak in the Inukitut language. He had Yup'ik and Irish-American ancestors.[2]
Ruben was born on November 26, 1951, at his family's winter camp, which was located at the old Catholic coal mine, about 35 miles southeast of Paulatuk.[5] The rich vein of coal in the Paulatuk region had been used as fuel by the Inuit, then American whalers and missionaries, who set up their mission in 1938.[5] Until 1959, Ruben lived the traditional semi-nomadic Inuvialuit lifestyle with a "small band of 10-15 families."[6] They moved among seasonal fishing and hunting camps, and most of their diet consisted of caribou, moose, muskox, game birds, waterfowl, and sea mammals.[2]:1[6] In 1955, when Ruben was four years old, his older brother, David Ruben Piqtoukun, who was five, and their older sister Martha, were the first of the 14 siblings to be sent to the residential school in Aklavik. David and Martha did not see their family again until 1958. Ruben represented this traumatic 1955 experience through his mother's eyes in his 2001 sculpture entitled The Last Goodbye.[7][8]
In 1959, Ruben, then 8, his siblings, and cousins were sent to the residential school, Grollier Hall, in Inuvik.[9] He lived there for the next eleven years, until 1970.[2]:5[6][10]
Career
In the summer of 1971 Ruben began his formal studies in art under the guidance of Ronald (Ron) Senungetuk, an Iñupiaq artist and art educator, who was head of the Native Arts Centre at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.[2]:6[4][8] At the university's Centre he "developed the understanding of how to combine traditional material and techniques with the contemporaneous interpretations of many myths and legends."[11] Ruben returned for a full year to study under Senungetuk from the summer of 1974 to the summer of 1975.[2]:7 Ruben pursued his artistic career over the next ten years.
Ruben met Toronto-based artist and art dealer and owner of the Pollock Gallery, Jack Pollock and Eva Quan in the 1970s.[2]:7[12] They introduced his work to the Toronto art scene over the next five years.[2]:7 Ruben's first solo exhibitions were held in The Pollock Gallery in 1977, 1978, 1979 and 1980.[4] Pollock described Ruben as a contemporary sculptor with Inuit ancestry".[2]:7
In 1989 Darlene Coward Wight, curator of Inuit art at the Winnipeg Art Gallery and a leading Inuit art scholar, curated "Out of Tradition" an exhibition by Abraham Anghik and his brother David Ruben Piqtoukun. She accompanied a "scaled-down version" of the exhibition across Canada's north for months.[13]
Ruben works with a wide variety of materials including stone and bronze.[3][8] His art work reflects and honours the traditional teachings of his Inuvialuit family and friends.[3][8]
After surviving cancer in late 2004, Ruben's sculpture reflected his interest in the Inuit/Norse Viking "contact period from the early 900s to the 1400s"[14] long before Europeans arrived in North America. In his biography, Ruben described how he was partly inspired by the story of his maternal aunt, Paniabuluk, who became the Inuit wife of Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson and who assisted him on many of his expeditions. In the early 20th century other Nordic visitors overwintered in Ruben's ancestral lands. Since then, Ruben has researched the "cultures of the circumpolar world, including those of Siberia, Scandinavia, Greenland and Iceland"[14] and found resonance between Inuit narratives and myths which is expressed through his art.[4]
In Shaman Beckoning Spirits which was included in the 2010 exhibition "Sanaugavut: Inuit Art from the Canadian Arctic" in Delhi, India, curated by the National Gallery of Canada's Christine Lalonde, Ruben represented how "Christianity changed the status of the Shaman, reducing once powerful leaders to beggars."[15]:17[16]
Ruben works with a wide variety of materials including whalebone, narwal tusk, "soapstone from British Columbia, Oregon, Brazil and South Africa; alabaster from Utah, Portugal and Italy, Italian Carrara marble"[12] and bronze. Some of his largest pieces weigh tons.[12] He incorporates "images and themes from diverse northern cultures, including Viking and Norse."[12] Since 2007, Ruben has been represented by the Kipling Gallery in Woodbridge, Ontario run by two Italian Canadian owners, Rocco Pannese and Lou Ruffolo, who opened their gallery in 2004.[12] In 2008, they hosted the 2008 exhibition "Abraham Anghik Ruben: Myths, Stories, Legends" with an illustrated catalogue, and another solo exhibition in 2009.[4][12]
On Saltspring Island Ruben "lives on ten acres and typically works on five to ten pieces at a time. One work in progress [in 2016] weigh[ed] four tons and is a limestone piece representing a mother bear and two cubs."[12]
Documentary
A half-hour documentary on Ruben was produced in 2007 as part of the 26-part series entitled "From the Spirit".[17]
Exhibitions
He had a solo show in the Bayard Gallery, New York in 1980 and another in Vancouver in 1981, "Images for a Canadian Heritage." In the 1990s he had solo exhibitions in Santa Fe and again in New York as well as a 1994 exhibition, "Abraham Anghik: Works in Bronze" at the Isaacs/Innuit Gallery in Toronto. In the 2000s, along with a 2001–2002 solo exhibition curated by Darlene Coward Wight at the Winnipeg Art Gallery which included a catalogue,[6] he had three solos exhibitions in Idaho, "The Art of Abraham Anghik Ruben" was featured at the Appleton Galleries in Vancouver, BC. "In 2010 "Abraham Anghik Ruben: Shaman's Dreams" was held at the Art Gallery of Mississauga with an illustrated catalogue and in 2012 he had a solo exhibition at the Hazelton Fine Art Gallery, Toronto.[4]
From May to September 2014, the Rockwell Museum of Western Art in New York, a Smithsonian affiliate, hosted "The World of Man, Animals and Spirits: A Personal Interpretation" which includes about twenty sculptures in soapstone and bronze in which Ruben "contrasts the ancient lives of two northern peoples-Norse adventurers and Inuit (Inuvialuit) whale hunters-guiding us to a new perspective on the complex history of the North American Arctic, a history shaped by movement, contact, and change".[14]
In 2014–2015 his solo exhibition, Abraham Anghik Ruben "Moving Forward: Breaking Through" was shown at the Museum Cerny Inuit Collection, Bern, Switzerland. on the theme of migration—specifically between the Inuit and the Vikings who "shared similar points of view".[11]
In 2018, works by Ruben and his brother Piqtoukun were featured in the "newly-renovated, reinstalled and renamed" Art Gallery of Ontario's J. S. McLean Centre for Indigenous & Canadian Art.[8]
The National Gallery of Canada, located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's national art museum. The museum's building takes up 46,621 square metres (501,820 sq ft), with 12,400 square metres (133,000 sq ft) of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the largest art museums in North America by exhibition space.
Inuvialuktun comprises several Inuit language varieties spoken in the northern Northwest Territories by Canadian Inuit who call themselves Inuvialuit. Some dialects and sub-dialects are also spoken in Nunavut.
The Inuvialuit or Western Canadian Inuit are Inuit who live in the western Canadian Arctic region. They, like all other Inuit, are descendants of the Thule who migrated eastward from Alaska. Their homeland – the Inuvialuit Settlement Region – covers the Arctic Ocean coastline area from the Alaskan border, east through the Beaufort Sea and beyond the Amundsen Gulf which includes some of the western Canadian Arctic Islands, as well as the inland community of Aklavik and part of Yukon. The land was demarked in 1984 by the Inuvialuit Final Agreement.
Jessie Oonark, was a prolific and influential Inuk artist of the Utkuhiksalingmiut Utkuhiksalingmiut whose wall hangings, prints and drawings are in major collections including the National Gallery of Canada.
Aklak Air is an Inuvialuit owned airline based in Inuvik in Northwest Territories in Canada. It operates year-round and seasonal scheduled services, as well as charter flights throughout the western Arctic. Its main base is Inuvik Airport.
Paulatuk is a hamlet located in the Inuvik Region of the Northwest Territories, Canada. It is located adjacent to Darnley Bay, in the Amundsen Gulf. The town was named for the coal that was found in the area in the 1920s, and the Siglitun spelling is Paulatuuq, "place of coal".
Ulukhaktok and known until 1 April 2006 as Holman or Holman Island) is a small hamlet on the west coast of Victoria Island, in the Inuvik Region of the Northwest Territories, Canada.
Inuit art, also known as Eskimo art, refers to artwork produced by Inuit, that is, the people of the Arctic previously known as Eskimos, a term that is now often considered offensive. Historically, their preferred medium was walrus ivory, but since the establishment of southern markets for Inuit art in 1945, prints and figurative works carved in relatively soft stone such as soapstone, serpentinite, or argillite have also become popular.
Inuit are a group of culturally and historically similar Indigenous peoples traditionally inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of North America, including Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, Yukon (traditionally), Alaska, and Chukotsky District of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia. Inuit languages are part of the Eskimo–Aleut languages, also known as Inuit-Yupik-Unangan, and also as Eskaleut. Inuit Sign Language is a critically endangered language isolate used in Nunavut.
Floyd Kuptana (1964-2021) was an Inuvialuit (Inuk) artist in Canada whose work is primarily stone carvings as well as paintings and collage.
David Ruben Piqtoukun ᑎᕕᑎ ᐱᑐᑯ ᕈᐱᐃᓐ is an Inuvialuk (Inuit) artist from Paulatuk, Northwest Territories.
The Inuvialuit Settlement Region, abbreviated as ISR, located in Canada's western Arctic, was designated in 1984 in the Inuvialuit Final Agreement by the Government of Canada for the Inuvialuit people. It spans 90,650 km2 (35,000 sq mi) of land, mostly above the tree line, and includes several subregions: the Beaufort Sea, the Mackenzie River delta, the northern portion of Yukon, and the northwest portion of the Northwest Territories. The ISR includes both Crown Lands and Inuvialuit Private Lands. Most of the ISR is represented by Nunakput, the territorial electoral district, meaning "our land" in Inuvialuktun.
Ningiukulu (Ningeokuluk) Teevee is a Canadian Inuk writer and visual artist.
Ingo D. W. Hessel is a Canadian art historian and curator specializing in Inuit Art. The author of Inuit Art: An Introduction, Hessel has curated exhibitions for the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, the Museum of Inuit Art in Toronto, and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.
Pitaloosie Saila was a Canadian Inuk graphic artist who predominantly made drawings and lithograph prints. Saila's work often explores themes such as family, shamanism, birds, and her personal life experiences as an Inuk woman. Her work has been displayed in over 150 exhibitions nationally and internationally, such as in the acclaimed Isumavut exhibition called "The Artistic Expression of Nine Cape Dorset Women". In 2004, Pitaloosie Saila and her well-known husband and sculptor Pauta Saila were both inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.
Ulayu Pingwartok was a Canadian Inuk artist known for drawings of domestic scenes and nature.
Karoo Ashevak was an Inuk sculptor who lived a nomadic hunting life in the Kitikmeot Region of the central Arctic before moving into Spence Bay, Northwest Territories in 1960. His career as an artist started in 1968 by participating in a government-funded carving program. Working with the primary medium of fossilized whale bone, Ashevak created approximately 250 sculptures in his lifetime, and explored themes of shamanism and Inuit spirituality through playful depictions of human figures, angakuit (shamans), spirits, and Arctic wildlife.
Mary Kapbak Okheena is an Inuvialuit graphic artist known for her stencil prints including "Musk-ox Waiting for the Tide to Cross Water" (1986) and "Shaman Dances to Northern Lights" (1991), drawings and embroidery. She is part of the third generation of organized graphic artists in the Canadian Arctic. Okheena has five children with her husband Eddie and she currently lives in Inuvik where she practices embroidery and makes wall hangings.
Ada Eyetoaq (1934-2014) was a Baker Lake (Nunavut) Inuk artist who produced traditional Inuit art. She is primarily known for her miniature soapstone sculptures.
Darlene Coward Wight is a Canadian art historian who has been Curator of Inuit art at the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG) since 1986.
↑ "Abraham Anghik Ruben: From the Spirit". From the Spirit (26 parts). 2007. Archived from the original on August 9, 2018. Retrieved August 2, 2018. Filmmakers: Bill Stewart, Raymond Yakeleya, Earth Magic Media
↑ "Memories: An Ancient Past" by Abraham Anghik Ruben (Inuvialuit, b. 1951). Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, 2010. Whale skull, Brazilian soapstone, and cedar; 176.0 x 207.0 x 62.0 cm. (Daniel Dabrowski, Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
