Mark Igloliorte: Tuvak Akkusinialuk Siaggijâk (Ice-Road Skating)
January 14–April 4, 2026
Salah J. Bachir New Media Wall
In Tuvak Akkusinialuk Siaggijâk (Ice-Road Skating), four Indigenous skateboarders travel the frozen Dettah Ice Road in the Northwest Territories, weaving together spray paint, grip tape, country food, and Inuit electropop. Igloliorte frames skateboarding as an embodied presence on the land—where play, resilience, and cultural knowledge move together across the ice. First developed through the Indigenous media incubator ARCTIC XR, the 360-degree video premiered at the 2022 Venice Biennale, marking a landmark moment in Indigenous digital storytelling on a global stage. In 2025, Igloliorte reinterpreted the work for Cairotronica in Egypt, shifting from headset-based immersion to cinematic scale and sound, further expanding the possibilities of Indigenous screen-based art.
Mark Igloliorte, Tuvak Akkusinialuk Siaggijâk (Ice-Road Skating), 2022, multi-channel video (still). Courtesy of the artist
Artist Bio
Mark Igloliorte (Inuk, b. 1977) is an artist, essayist, and educator. He is an associate professor in the painting program at the Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver, where he also served as Coordinator of Indigenous Pedagogy and was previously a Visiting Artist Scholar in 2014. Igloliorte’s practice explores Indigenous futures through embodied movement and language, often engaging with the kayak, the komatik (Inuit dogsled), and the skateboard as ways of traversing land and culture. His public projects include Saputiit—Fish Weir Skateboard Plaza, a large-scale commission for Nuit Blanche Toronto, 2022. His work has been presented both nationally and internationally, including at the Sámi Pavilion of the 59th Venice Biennale, 2022.
