Refract: An Open Access Visual Studies Journal

For Moving with joy across the ice while my face turns brown from the sun (2019), Maureen Gruben borrowed fourteen hand-built sleds from families in her Western Arctic hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk and brought them together on the spring sea ice outside her home to form a short-duration installation in which elements of multiple genres—land art, portraiture, performance, monument, photography—converge. Sleds have always been integral to Inuvialuit life, particularly in the spring when community members expertly pack them with everything they need to live on the land. Hitching them to skidoos, they cross miles of frozen tundra and ice to Husky Lakes, where they prepare their canvas tents and off-grid cabins for the ice fishing season.