tupilakosaurus - Print matters!

gata pissaanera erseqqissaqqippaa.
Inuup nunatallu imminnut
taartigiiaarnerat, inooriaatsip
nunasiallu akornanni, taamaallaaterseqissarneqarsinnaanngilaq
nunap timitaqanngitsumik
pilikki atorlugu pappialamut
titartaanikkut, kisiannili isummamigutallangoriataallaqqissumik
aattaqartumillu sippoqarpoq
kaffinik, taratsunik, sukkunik,
qaqorteqqasunik il.il.; nioqqutissanik
pigisanillu paarlagaanneq,
nunasiap ulluinnarni atugaraa
atortarsimallugulu, minnerunngitsumillu
nunarsuarmi politikkip
aningaasarsiornerullu atuutinnerinut
tulluuppoq. Legende-mi
Arkep iluatsippaa naalaarluarluni
misiginneqatiginnillunilu nunap
assingata timitaqanngitsup paasisallu
titartarnerat qaangerpaa
ulluinnarni inuunerup ilungersunartup
ilanngunneratigut. Soorlulusooq
nunataq inunnit tassani
suli inuusunit nassuiarneqarsinnaallunilu
allamik nassuiaaseqqinneqarsinnaasoq.
Tassuunarpiarlumi Legende-p
eqquissumik ataqatigiissilerpai inuup
ataatsip kinaassutsiminik inuunerminilu
ilikkakkamigut qamani
pigisai nunarsuarmilu politikki,
nunap assiliaq, nunatamik killiliisoq,
ataatsikkut ilivitsunngortillugit,
sunniisinnaanngorlugit inuillu
inuuneri nutaamik paasineqarsinnaasunngorlugit.
Jan-Erik Lundström
Pia Arke. Legend I-V. 1999
The title of this series of
works, Legend (in Latin
“legenda” = things to read,
in English “legend” = story,
caption, inscription, explanation
of symbols on a
map), reminds us of the
fact that a map is always
something more than and
different from a simple
and immediate and given
picture of a territory. Rather
than imitating or reproducing
the territory, the map
commands and defines the
territory it depicts. Perhaps
one could even say that the
map creates the territory.
Before the map’s intervention
there were no borders,
no outside and no inside, no
my and no your territory.
After the map’s intervention
the contours of the territory
have been carved in stone,
places have received new
identities, landscapes have
been coloured and living
spaces fenced in.
In the five collages of maps,
photographs and other
material that constitute
the series Legend Pia Arke
contrasts the colonial map
– the map that was drawn
by the coloniser’s cartographers
– with the presence of
individuals. Here, in the territory,
there are, there live
individuals. A human being
seen through a photographic
portrait placed in the middle
of the map, visualises the
map’s ambitions: to identify
and fence in people’s everyday
lives, to colour and
define their goals.
But Legend rearticulates
the power of the map in
more than one way. The
exchange between man and
territory, between life-world
and colony, was not only
characterised by an abstract
cartography but also derives
its strength from a material
economy. That is why
the maps in Legend are not
just geometries of ink on
paper, but temperament-
and blood-filled remains
of coffee, salt, sugar, rice,
etc.; the exchange of goods
and things that constitutes
and constituted the daily
life of the colony and, not
least, its geopolitical and
economic raison d’être. In
Legend Arke has succeeded
with sensitive empathy
in overlaying the abstract
geometry and empiricism of
the map with the lived toil
of daily life. And with hope.
As if it were still possible for
the territory to defined and
redefined by the people who
live there.
It is exactly in this way that
Legend so precisely unites
life experiences rooted in
personal biography with
geopolitics; how the small
strokes of the pen – which
change a map, a map picture,
and which draw in a
territory – can completely,
at one and the same time,
affect and redefine people’s
lives.
Jan-Erik Lundström
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