What We Never Lost, 2020/25

For over two decades, Lindsay McIntyre’s work across documentary, experimental film, and expanded cinema performance has originated from laboriously manipulating the properties of celluloid film. Recurring themes in her wide-ranging practice include her family history, displacement from Inuit Nunangat, place and land-based methodologies, Inuit community, and survivance.

At the Canada Line’s Yaletown-Roundhouse Station, McIntyre presents a selection of double-exposed images that depict and simultaneously obscure the beaded front panel of her great-grandmother’s amauti. These hypnotic frames, drawn from her silent, hand-processed Super 16 colour reversal animation Seeing Her (2020), parallel the abundant skill, technique, and labour involved in the parka’s making with McIntyre’s hands-on analogue filmmaking. Offering an experience of the garment that resists total visibility, the film stills enact a refusal of the ethnographic documentary lens that often accompanies images of Inuit and Inuit culture.

Presented by the Contemporary Art Gallery in partnership with Capture.