ASES:TSI KARAHS’TANION IENWAT:KONTA:KWE
ᐱᖓᓱᐃᓕᕿᖓᔪᑦ ᐃᓇᖁᓇᕐᑐᓕᐅᕐᑏᑦ ᓴᓇᐅᒐᖏᑦ: ᑲᑎᕐᓱᐊᑦ
Resulting of a long year preparation, four curators revisited La Guilde’s permanent collection with their sensibilities and knowledge. They questioned, appraised and finally married a wide variety of matters and materials used by the artists and craftsperson who created these objects preciously preserved by La Guilde.
Divided into three sections, Inuit, First Nations art and Crafts, Material Trilogy: One Collection, presents a portion of La Guilde treasures collection. Nearly 115 objects are staged, in interacting and illustrating the matter. Among these artifacts, we discover a variety of works of art and crafts that are sculptures, pieces of fabric, hooked rugs, baskets, utilitarian objects that are, at present times, precious items serving as a relay between past and present, demonstrating knowledge and know-how over times.
This collection, amassed for aesthetic and educational purposes, carries in it its history since 1906, but also reflects the values of its founders who wanted to encourage craftsmanship, give visibility to artisans and especially to offer the public handmade objects of high quality. The objects, collected from coast to coast, demonstrate an aesthetic that has been fashionable among Euro-Canadians in recent times.
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THE CURATORS
Bruno Andrus
A glassblower artist and an art historian, Bruno Andrus specializes in the arts and crafts history in Quebec. In discovering the objects in La Guilde's collection, he could see the extent of the interest for La Guilde leaders for the craft arts, since its inception. The diversity of techniques matters and materials, reflects the vision of these avant-garde women who wanted to showcase the multiplicity of Canada's craftspeople know how.
Lisa Qiluqqi Koperqualuk & Gabriel Nuraki Koperqualuk
Lisa Qiluqqi Koperqualuk, anthropologist from Puvirnituq, casted an eye over La Guilde’s Inuit collection. This being a very special collection because La Guilde was the first institution to present Inuit art by organizing a sculpture exhibition in Montreal in 1949. A touching collection for Lisa Qiluqqi, as her grandfather Aisa Qupirualuk Alasuaq, was one of the first to exchange his works with visitors to Nunavik, in the early 1950s.
Gabriel Nuraki Koperqualuk, Lisa’s son, is a young Montreal artist who practices digital art and photography. "Witnessing these works of art, especially those of my great-grandfather, allows me to get closer to my culture and my roots."
Sylvain Rivard
The multidisciplinary artist, Sylvain Rivard found in La Guilde’s collection objects that illustrate the know-how, the various matters that testify to the use of the resources of its territory by the artists and artisans of the First Nations. It is important for him to distinguish the objects made for sale to tourists from utilitarian objects, that all reflect the artistic sensibility of their creators.