Affiche de l'Exposition (en)

Enlarge the visual

- Exploring Eskimo artwork -

Conçue par Edmund Carpenter, cinéaste et anthropologue spécialiste du Canada arctique et de la Sibérie, cette exposition présentée au musée du Quai Branly propose au visiteur une expérience inédite : découvrir, pour la première fois en Europe, l’ensemble des arts esquimaux.Elle privilégie un parcours tout autour de la calotte glaciaire, de la Sibérie à l’Alaska, où les civilisations (Evenk, Dorset, Kuskokwim…) sont autant de points de repères.

- Age-old cultures on vast expanses of land -

“Upside Down, les Arctiques” displays a selection of some of the most significant artefacts from the ancient Eskimo culture. The exhibition explores the relationship between the Arctic’s hostile environment and the development of the Siberian and Alaskan people’s visual cultures, including their sensory perceptions of the landscape, spiritual and physical orientation, and approach to both the imaginary and real experience.

The cultures represented cover thousands of years and enormous land masses that include northeastern modern Russia, Greenland, the Bering Strait and northeastern and northwestern Canada.

- Exhibition layout -

The exhibition setting was designed by Doug Wheeler, an American artist who is a pioneer of the “Light and Space” movement. The scenography by Jean de Gastines makes use of the gallery’s curves, designed by Jean Nouvel, to lead us through the North Pole’s white and angle-free landscape.

There is no commentary for visitors during the exhibition, allowing them to better appreciate, on their own, the beauty represented by the different Eskimo civilizations.

The exhibition begins in a room with interior surfaces entirely made of ice, plunging visitors into a cold, white, polar atmosphere. In a second, darker room, visitors come face-to-face with an Eskimo dancer by means of a particularly realistic holographic process.

The main area, vertically designed and completely white, with a gradation of light in the background that evokes the gradual transition from day to night, leads visitors to a series of places, from brightest to darkest, that display the various categories of art objects presented in the exhibition.