Meet Glenn Gear!

Kimutsiijut (dog team) follows a caravan of “ghost dogs” running wild across the frame of the animation. These dogs mark a traditional way of life for Inuit who have depended on dog teams for access to the land, hunting, and travelling. The ghost dogs also recall the brutal dog slaughters that occurred across the Canadian North from the 1950s-1970s, meant to move Inuit off the land in an effort to ‘civilize’ them. Gear’s ghost dogs return in this work as resilient spirits to tell their story, as they run towards a place that promises to be more empathetic, inclusive, and just.

As part of his Inuit Futures 2020 Artist-in-Residency, Glenn Gear shows us how to make a stop-motion animation video using a black bear paper puppet. Watch and follow along to try for yourself!

You can learn more about Gear’s C-Can installation, titled luani/Silami (It’s full of stars), in INUA in this CBC Manitoba video, and check it out in the exhibition that’s on view until December 2021.