Maureen Gruben Inuvialuk, b. 1963
99.7 x 243.8 cm
Stitching My Landscape (2017) is Gruben’s first large scale work of land art and it is deeply tied to memory, family, and healing. The core visual elements of red material stretched across ice are embedded in a recollection Gruben has of her brother harvesting seal: during the processing a long, vivid, red string of fresh gut was flung out taught against the white snow. Consisting of 111 ice holes connected with red broadcloth, Stitching My Landscape extends for nearly a thousand feet. The work simultaneously evokes traditional clothing and means of subsistence, the strength of family and community, and the potential for healing—and being healed by—the land.
The initial iteration of this multifaceted project was commissioned by Partners In Art for LandMarks2017/Repères2017 and curated by Tania Willard.
Exhibitions
Still Matter
Group show at Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV
In partnership with Las Vegas Womxn of Color Arts Festival
March 25 - July 23, 2022
THE TIME OF THINGS: The Continuum of Indigenous Customary Practices into Contemporary Art
Group Show at University of Victoria Legacy Art Galleries, Victoria, BC
April 11 - July 7, 2018
Group show at Comox Valley Art Gallery, Comox, BC
March 14 - September 11, 2020
And a temporary wall vinyl reproduction of the still at this large format was included as part of:
Worried Earth: Eco-Anxiety and Entangled Grief
Group Show at Gallery 1C03, Winnipeg, MB
September 12 - November 10, 2022
Publications
Ellen Avril, Andrew C. Weislogel, Kate Addleman Frankel, Elizabeth Yearsley, Jumay Chu, Art and Environmental Struggle Curating an Exhibition About Place‐Rooted Ecological Knowledge
GeoHealth Vol 6 Issue 12, 2022. Published online Dec 1, 2022
Jacqueline Millner, Catriona Moore. Contemporary Art and Feminism.
Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. July 2021 (pp.176-78)
Timo Jokela, Maria Huhmarniemi, Ruth Beer & Anna Soloviova, Mapping New Genre Arctic Art
The Arctic Yearbook, online 2021
Laureline Simon Krichewsky, Ice Works by Maureen Gruben
Tero Magazine, online February, 2021
Madalen Claire Benson, Stitching the Wound: Land-based Gestures of Healing and Resistance in the Work of Postcommodity and Maureen Gruben
Environment, Space, Place, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Spring 2020), pp. 1-24, University of Minnesota Press
Brian Kowikchuk, Defying Boundaries
Tusaayaksat, Spring 2020
Ray Cronin, Crossovers: “Sense of Site”
Border Crossings, Border Crossings, September 2019 #151
Mollie Cronin, Visual arts review: A Sense of Site at the AGNS
The Coast, online February 21, 2019
Monograph: Maureen Gruben: QULLIQ
Emily Carr University Press, Vancouver BC, 2020
Britt Gallpen, Surface Tensions: Maureen Gruben, Sonya Kelliher-Combs and Joar Nango
Inuit Art Quarterly, Summer 2018.
Kevin Griffin, ART SEEN: Maureen Gruben's materiality ranges from polar bear bones to bubble wrap
Vancouver Sun, online March 6, 2018
Erin Donnelly, An Arctic Installation Marks the End of An Era
Azure, online August 17, 2017
Lucien Durey, Vancouver Report: A Changing Climate
Canadian Art, online July 26, 2017
Paul Gessell, Parks Project Communes with Nature
Galleries West, online June 5, 2017
Betty Ann Jordan, Maureen Gruben draws attention to a rapidly changing Arctic with Stitching My Landscape
Canadian Geographic, March 15, 2017