Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for your time today. My name is Joshua Vettivelu. I'm an artist and an educator.
When I was going through art school, there was a saying that I heard often. It was that if you choose to be an artist, you'll only see money from your work when you're dead. Even though that's a bit of a jokey saying, I believe there's some truth to it, and today I'm here to extrapolate some of the gravity of that joke, especially as it applies to senior and Inuit artists.
First nations, Métis, and Inuit artists, specifically those from the north, have the most to lose from the absence of the artist's resale right. It is important to note that indigenous and Inuit artists make up a large portion of our art market. The population of Nunavut alone is made up of 33% artists. In 2015, the Inuit visual arts and crafts economy of Canada contributed over $64 million to the Canadian GDP, and it accounts for more than 2,100 full-time-equivalent jobs.
Why are indigenous and Inuit artists poised to lose the most? The first point is that indigenous artists, specifically those in the north, suffer from a lack of access to the primary market, and if they do have access, it is often exploitative. What does that mean? The structural conditions of colonialism, which are very real, often force indigenous artists to sell their work for lower price points to make ends meet and to provide for their families and communities.
An example of this is Kenojuak Ashevak's The Enchanted Owl. It originally sold for $24. It was later resold at a public auction for $58,000. With the artist's resale right of 5%, she would have made approximately $3,000. This summer, the Art Gallery of Ontario had a giant retrospective of Kenojuak's work, and the city was plastered in reproductions of The Enchanted Owl. The question I have for all of you is, what does it mean for Canada to compensate an indigenous artist who is a Governor General's award-winning artist only $24 for her most well-known creation? It is just a straight fact that this is what she received for that work.
Point number two is that an indigenous artist is more than a singular person. I have a quote here from Goo Pootoogook, who is Annie Pootoogook's brother:
”She had a lot of cousins and friends who didn't have much money, and she would sell her artwork and take care of them,” he said. People began following her on her weekly trips to the co-op, he said, because they knew she was about to be paid. “She would say, 'It's only money,'” he said.
What this shows us is that artists in the north are also economic pillars of their community. When you are an artist whose community and family are not doing well, you put that money back into your community.
That also tells me that we cannot dismiss the importance of a $50 royalty to a community's mental and physical health. It is confusing to me that we would dispute these amounts, which ADAC has deemed negligible for artists but debilitating for its own businesses.
Point number three is that there's an argument that the artist is constantly participating in the market throughout their career, but an increase in an artist's profile doesn't equal more sales. Increasing the cost of the artist's next body of work isn't always a real solution, as most people want to purchase the work that made the artist famous in the first place. We know this in the case of Mary Pratt, who was one of Canada and the east coast's most well-known painters.
To conclude, I guess what I'm really advocating for is some harm reduction in the ways that we view artists' labour. I do not think it is a utopian fix. I think it is a Band-Aid, but as we know, Band-Aids are in every first aid kit.
North America has a long history of devaluing the humanity and labour of indigenous people. I thank you for your help in ensuring that artists, specifically artists who have been abused by our country, are compensated for all the wealth that is made in their name.
Thank you.