This billboard is commissioned for #callresponse, an exhibition co-organized by Tarah Hogue, Maria Hupfield, and Tania Willard. #callresponse supports the work of Indigenous women from across Turtle Island through art commissions that drive dialogue and mobilize action on the topic of reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples.

Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory is a second-generation uaajerneq performer. She was taught the Greenlandic mask dance by her mother, Karla Jessen Williamson. Uaajerneq involves a wild array of expressions that play with fear, humour, and sexuality. The black face paint is a symbol of human insignificance in the enormity of the universe, portraying awe and humility. Red is a symbol of the vagina, and the foam balls held in the cheeks elicit male sex organs, embracing a multiple and fluid gender identity that is culturally situated. Williamson Bathory uses the dance as a strategy to prepare her community—the Inuit of Nunavut—to face difficult questions around governance and extremes of life in the North through creativity. In this way, uaajeerneq is a story linking past, present, and future. She states, “As Indigenous people, we don’t own our stories unless we tell them ourselves because of the legacy of colonization. ... Stories have been ripped out of us in so many ways and unless we tell our stories, they are not ours.”