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Curator’s Note
GTA 21 Triennial
Installation with Ashoona Ashoona
2021
Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto, Canada
“Although the imagery in many of Hatanaka’s linocut prints appears to portray a floating world, they are instead the snowdrifts found across the Arctic. In 2014, Hatanaka began working in Kinngait, where washi was introduced in the 1950s and has been used for printmaking since. Here, she began documenting the frozen formations that the Inuit have used for centuries as natural forms of navigation. During this time, she also met Ashoona Ashoona, and in 2021, they began to collaborate on a project to trace a loose "map/nunangua" of the Arctic region, beginning with Tujjaat Island, where Ashoona's grandmother, artist Pitseolak Ashoona, was born. The map moves through time and geographies, passing Netsilik Lake to recollect Ashoona's namesake's travels around the region, and spans through the Northwest Passage to Yokohama, Japan, the birthplace of Hatanaka's grandmother. Uummatima tillirninga, I can feel my heart beat (2021), is a work that visually cites ancient Japanese maps, which were intended to be read north to south, and which incorporated illustrations, like notable figures and well-known sites. In this case, the artists' hands and portraits of their respective grandmothers, in combination with prints of the snowdrifts, are featured.
These snowdrift prints resurface in many of Hatanaka’s works, serving as a documentation of this fragile environment, which is under threat today from rising temperatures.” - Claire Shea, independant curator