VINNIE KARETAK + LAAKKULUK WILLIAMSON BATHORY | QAUMMA

Reclaiming Space

Signifying light in Inuktitut, “qaumma” echoes the fire that Inuit women keep burning to protect their family. Co-written by the prodigious Inuk artist Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory, who handles the direction, and her collaborator Vinnie Karetak, an iconic actor from Nunavut, this sculptural and performative work tackles the forced displacements that shaped the lives of their ancestors and their collective memory. It’s a radiant and poetic act of revolt.

Williamson Bathory grounds her creative work in the practice of uaajeerneq, the traditional Greenland mask dance passed on to her by her mother. Feminist and decolonial, this tradition plays with and addresses the audience. In front of a stunning iceberg evoking the generosity and intransigence of nature, the powerful performers tell how Inuit families find light despite social fragmentation, reclaiming and shaping their own space, marred by centuries of colonization, with the help of their language, their guts, their culture.