This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Association of Artists in Greenland, KIMIK, Kalaallit Nunaat’s largest professional organization for visual artists. KIMIK was founded in 1995 by Anne-Birthe Hove (1951–2012), Miki Jacobsen, Jessie Kleemann and Buuti Pedersen—four artists with radically different practices, but common goals for their country’s art world. Since then the organization has grown to over 20 members, including both Kalaallit and non-Inuit artists who live permanently in Kalaallit Nunaat. Although KIMIK’s membership, identity and activities have evolved significantly over its 30-year history, in many ways the association’s objectives have remained the same: to build solidarity among artists while working to improve their labour conditions, expand access to exhibition opportunities at home and abroad and represent artists’ interests on a national level.
Anne-Birthe Hove, Ivan Burkal, Jessie Kleemann and Buuti Pedersen at a KIMIK meeting in 1994 COURTESY MILIK PUBLISHING
Pedersen, who served as KIMIK’s chairperson from 2009 to 2015, explains that the organization started out of the founders’ desire for a greater sense of creative community. They would often run into one another in town, and eventually “we started talking about how we should meet sometime so that we could benefit from each other’s company.” [1] They started sketching together in the early 1990s at Illorput, a community centre in Nuussuaq, Kalaallit Nunaat, and as they began to collaborate, the vision of a more structured professional network started to emerge.
Buuti Pedersen Seal Sculpture (2005) Glass 21 x 11.5 x 11.5 cm COURTESY NUUMMI EQQUMIITSULIANIK SAQQUMMERSITSIVIK PHOTO TOMASZ WACKO © THE ARTIST
From these beginnings, KIMIK emphasized the importance of collectivity to a robust art scene: the idea that by joining together, artists could improve exhibition standards and working conditions for all, while also enriching their own creative practices. Among the principles they agreed on was the importance of education, deciding that prospective members should be able to document some formal training or a substantial work history, such as experience with larger exhibitions or public art projects. Hove, Jacobsen, Kleemann and Pedersen each had an eclectic range of educational backgrounds; setting formal membership criteria, as they saw it, was simply a way of encouraging other artists to value their own artistic labour. They saw education not only as a sign of professionalism but as a tool to improve artists’ labour conditions and elevate their self-expectations: in other words, a source of empowerment.
The founders initially chose the name Kalaallit Nunaanni Eqqumiitsuliortut Kattuffiat (KNEK) for the association, but in 1998 changed it to KIMIK, meaning strength or power—“and we wanted to have power,” Pedersen emphasizes.
Miki Jacobsen Ruby II (2007) Acrylic 197 x 162 cm COURTESY NUUMMI EQQUMIITSULIANIK SAQQUMMERSITSIVIK © THE ARTIST
Empowerment was in the air during the first two decades of the Home Rule era in Kalaallit Nunaat, when all Kalaallit took a collective step toward self-determination by forming Naalakkersuisut, a local government to run Kalaallit Nunaat, rather than being governed by the colonial Danish state. Throughout the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, artists went to work building new institutions on their own terms, including through groups similar to KIMIK. Before KIMIK, artists in Kalaallit Nunaat (Kalaallit and non-Inuit alike) had mostly organized within activist contexts, such as the annual Aasivik cultural festivals, or in more local, commercial or informal groups, the most prominent of which was the Simerneq artist association, which held group exhibitions in the capital and occasionally other towns along the coast from 1979 to 1998. Just before they disbanded, Simerneq organized the second exhibition at the newly opened Katuaq Cultural Centre in Nuuk in the spring of 1997, setting a precedent for artists to claim space in Kalaallit Nunaat’s largest public cultural venue. [2]
Left and Centre: Setting up KIMIK’s workshop on Avannarliit. Right: The first group show at the Avannarliit workshop, 2002 COURTESY MILIK PUBLISHING
KIMIK’s focus on professional development set them apart from these earlier artist associations, and in 1998 KIMIK’s members built on Simerneq’s precedent when they exhibited 112 artworks in Katuaq’s foyer. KIMIK continued to exhibit there on and off over the next decade, and in 2008, they reached an agreement with Katuaq that formalized annual KIMIK exhibitions as a fixed feature of Katuaq’s events calendar. More recently, the annual spring exhibitions have alternated between Katuaq and Nuummi Eqqumiitsulianik Saqqummersitsivik - Nuuk Art Museum, in addition to numerous exhibitions abroad.
Ivalo Abelsen Ipiutak (2024) Gravure 21 x 14.5 cm COURTESY NUUMMI EQQUMIITSULIANIK SAQQUMMERSITSIVIK © THE ARTIST
The title of KIMIK’s first Katuaq exhibition, Dorset III (1998), immediately announced an ambitious vision for the group’s future, remixing an anthropological term for arctic ancestors of earlier periods. As Hove explained at the opening, “The Dorset culture’s Inuit have left behind many artistic tracks for us. We hope that with the exhibition Dorset III we can also leave some tracks that won’t be easily blown away.” [3] With this statement, Hove aligned KIMIK’s artists with a deep ancestral heritage while at the same time emphasizing that the new generation—represented by Dorset III—were charting their own paths that, like those of generations past, would lead them into the future.
Lisbeth Karline Poulsen cuts the ribbon at the opening of the exhibition Blå/Tungujortoq/Blue, accompanied by Buuti Pedersen and Julia Pars, Katuaq Cultural Centre, Nuuk, 2013 COURTESY KATUAQ CULTURAL CENTRE
The basic purpose of KIMIK’s annual exhibitions is to provide a platform for artists to showcase their work in a shared space and on their own terms. While this might seem like a simple gesture, it represents a powerful assertion of artistic self-determination when seen in the context of the broader history of art exhibitions in and about Kalaallit Nunaat. Before KIMIK’s founding, opportunities for Kalaallit artists to participate in group exhibitions were extremely rare. Most larger exhibitions were organized by Danish curators, and oftentimes Kalaallit communities were not their primary audience. Pia Arke (1958–2007) noted this in 1994 when she published a scathing critique of The Flying Kayak (1993), the most prominent exhibition of contemporary art from Kalaallit Nunaat in the 1990s. Arke called out the exhibition’s curators for framing artists of her generation through a patronizing, ethnographic lens. She urged artists to “imagine the possibility that we Greenlandic artists, to a much greater degree, take responsibility ourselves for the exhibitions” of their work, emphasizing that “it must be in our interest to have influence over how they should look and be.” [4] The problem of outside curators struggling to connect on a local level has come up again and again, even in more self-reflexive exhibitions like The Red Snowmobile (2005), which drew heavily on postcolonial theory. Julie Edel Hardenberg observed that even though this exhibition was filled with conceptually complex and politically relevant work, including her landmark installation Rigsfællesskabspause (2005), it still failed to spark debate in Kalaallit Nunaat. [5] Ivan Burkal, on the other hand, critiqued The Red Snowmobile for prioritizing academic perspectives and excluding “more traditional art, such as what is often shown in KIMIK’s exhibitions”—meaning paintings, drawings and prints. This exclusion, he argued, was a product of the exhibition’s roots in “the Danish curator tradition.” [6]
Anne Birthe-Hove Left: X-ray (1995) Right: X-ray (1997) Polymer photogravure 42 x 15 cm COURTESY NUUMMI EQQUMIITSULIANIK SAQQUMMERSITSIVIK © THE ARTIST
By contrast KIMIK, in providing space for the full spectrum of artistic expression in Kalaallit Nunaat, put into action Arke’s call for artists to take back authority over how their work is seen. The diversity of artistic expression that Arke and Burkal saw lacking in two of the most high-profile exhibitions of the last 30 years is central to KIMIK’s identity. “We are very different kinds of artists,” Pedersen emphasizes. “Some are old school artists, and some are modern conceptual artists . . . I think it is very important that we are so different, and still together.” KIMIK’s members themselves decide what to include in their group exhibitions, and while they sometimes select a broad exhibition theme, there is no single curator to pass judgment or impose an agenda over their work.
Left: Installation view of Exit (2001) by Inuk Silis Høegh at KIMIK’s 2001 exhibition, Katuaq Cultural Centre, Nuuk, 2001 Right: Newspaper article reporting the theft of Exit two days after the 2001 exhibition opened. This article, alongside the police report, was hung where the object had been
While KIMIK has provided an important platform for artists working in styles that are often excluded from Danish arts institutions, in some years artists have also used the annual exhibitions as an opportunity to experiment with new techniques and controversial subjects that they may have struggled to show in other venues. Dorset III, for example, included several of Hove’s first experiments in polymer photogravure, a hybrid of photography and graphic techniques. In this series, Hove layered brain imaging scans and x-rays atop images of tupilaat figures and archival photographs of women taken under colonial circumstances, drawing together the image-making practices of supernatural forces, high-tech medicine and ethnographic surveillance. An equally provocative project was the centrepiece of KIMIK’s 2001 Katuaq exhibition when Inuk Silis Høegh, who would later become a KIMIK member, was invited to participate as a guest. For this exhibition, his first in a visual art context, Silis Høegh presented Exit (2001), a room-sized installation that confronted some of the most harmful coping mechanisms that people use to drop out of society. It included, among other things, a towering pile of VHS tapes atop which a television played ultrashort video clips on an endless loop, eyeglasses with beer bottles stuck in their lenses and a rifle jutting through a mirror, facing the viewer.
Peter “Kujooq” Kristiansen Eagle (2023) Driftwood 30 x 70 cm COURTESY NUUMMI EQQUMIITSULIANIK SAQQUMMERSITSIVIK © THE ARTIST
In addition to providing a platform for socially engaged artworks like these, KIMIK has directly advocated for artists on a political and legal level, demanding recognition that they, as Hove often said, “have a place in society, within the national budget and everything.” [7] KIMIK’s first major political success came in 2000 when Nuuk Municipality (now Sermersooq Municipality) agreed to let the group rent a publicly owned building in Avannarliit, an area in Nuuk, for use as a communal workshop. For many years, KIMIK has fought to pass a law that would guarantee that 1 percent of the budget for all larger building projects goes to commissioning public art, making a consistent source of funding available for Kalaallit Nunaat’s artists who, like artists elsewhere in the Arctic, often struggle to make a living from their work. KIMIK began lobbying for the law in 1998 during Hove’s chairmanship, as she had experience producing public art projects for the Nukissiorfiit power plant in Aasiaat in 1991 and the Aasiaat airport in 1998. Hove and subsequent KIMIK chairpersons saw advocating for a 1 percent for-art law as part of KIMIK’s mandate to work towards improving artists’ labour conditions while broadly expanding public access to art. By 2024 it looked as if the law might finally pass, but with the change in government this past spring, progress has stalled again.
Arnajaraq Støvlbæk Breaking Patterns (2025) Glass beads and thread 230 x 80 cm COURTESY NUUMMI EQQUMIITSULIANIK SAQQUMMERSITSIVIK PHOTO CEBASTIAN ROSING © THE ARTIST
Beyond any individual policy changes, KIMIK’s most important political contribution is that it has empowered artists to speak with a collective voice—a voice they have used to defend their place in society. When the Naalakkersuisut in 2017 unilaterally announced that Eqqumiitsuliornermut Ilinniarfik (Greenland Art School) would be relocated from Nuuk to Aasiaat, for example, KIMIK’s members pushed back strongly in the press, emphasizing that the proposal was made without any consultation and would have severely harmed the school and its students. [8] Today, KIMIK is one of several collective voices for cultural workers in Kalaallit Nunaat, joined by groups like the authors association Kalaallit Atuakkiortut and the arts umbrella organization Eqqumiitsuliornikkut Pinngorartitsisut Ingerlatsisullu.
KIMIK logo designed by Frederik “Kunngi” Kristensen COURTESY KIMIK
Artists “can be vulnerable if only a few people are working,” Pedersen emphasizes. KIMIK’s logo testifies to the resiliency that comes from its collective voice. Designed by Frederik “Kunngi” Kristensen (1952–2021), the logo is a black blade of grass set against an olive-green background. As humble as the image is, it communicates the core of KIMIK’s power: the con-viction that together, artists “are as strong as a stalk of grass swaying in the wind.” [9]
David W. Norman is a writer and art historian trained at the University of Copenhagen. His writing has appeared in publications such as October, Peripeti, Kunst og Kultur and First American Art Magazine, and in exhibition catalogues for IAIA MoCNA and Nuummi Eqqumiitsulianik Saqqummersitsivik.
NOTES
1 All quotes Buuti Pedersen, interview with David W. Norman, April 2025.
2 “Simerneq kulturikkut illorsuarmi/ Simerneq udstiller i kulturhuset,” Atuagagdliutit, April 29, 1997, 24.
3 “Kimik Katuami ilisarnaasiivoq. Saqqummersitsineq ‘Dorset III’ tupigusutsitsivoq / Spor af Kimik i Katuaq. Udstillingen ‘Dorset III’ imponerer,” Atuagagdliutit, November 17, 1998. Translated by the author.
4 Pia Arke, “‘Lad os lytte omsorgsfuldt.’ Bem.rkninger vedr.rende udstillingen ‘Den flyvende Kajak’ p. Brandts Kl.defabrik i Odense,” Sermitsiaq no. 5 (1994): 15. Translated by the author.
5 Iben Mondrup Salto and Julie Edel Hardenberg, “An Appetite Whetted,” in Scandinavian Museums and Cultural Diversity, eds. Katherine Goodnow and Haci Akman
6 Ivan Burkal, “Nye sculpturer i det offentlige rum,” Neriusaaq 20, no. 2 (2009): 17. Translated by the author.
7 Anne-Birthe Hove, quoted in Jessie Kleemann, “At skr.ve over Nordatlanten,” in Anne-Birthe Hove, ed. J.rgen Chemnitz (Milik Publishing, 2016), 144. Translated by the author.
8 “KIMIK: Kun Nuuk kan tilbyde kunstnermilj.,” Sermitsiaq, April 10, 2017, sermitsiaq.ag/kultur/kimik-kun-nuuk-kan-tilbydekunstnermiljo/ 545334.
9 Tupaarnaq Rosing Olsen (ed),
Kimik–ukiut 20 år, (Milik, 2016), 7. Translated by the author.