Cracks in the soul

“Ever since the age of 14 I have been creating art, because I believed I could fill every single crack in my soul with colors.” Gukki Nuka

25 February - 30 April

Artists create for many different reasons. For Gukki Nuka, the compulsion to create art was a necessity that helped him through a childhood and youth of sexual abuse.

In other words, the works exhibited in Cracks in the Soul are profoundly rooted in a personal experience. For Gukki, creating the exhibition was a way of overcoming his experiences and surviving. But the exhibition has a much broader aim. For many years, at the start of his artistic career, Gukki’s art was ‘private’, and the meticulous, perfectionist ceramics he previously produced were works of art in themselves. But, as Gukki gradually processed the abuse he had suffered, his courage grew, along with a desire to reach out to the outside world, to get involved in public debate and to help other people with similarly traumatic experiences.

While sexual abuse of children and adolescents is a problem that pervades society, the subject is taboo and all too often associated with shame and silence. Gukki hopes that, by virtue of his position and his art, he can help break the silence that shrouds abuse.

The exhibition features a series of self-portraits, in which the body is an object, a victim and a human being, presented in nightmarish landscapes of forest and ice. The works exude not only enormous vulnerability and sensitivity, but also claustrophobic loneliness and pain. In the exhibition, Gukki generously offers visitors a space for discussion and debate about themes and issues that are tough to deal with.

Gukki Nuka created the works for the exhibition with his smart phone. What started as a genuine method of survival evolved into an artistic strategy and ultimately a contribution to the public debate.

The exhibition is the result of a collaboration with the Nuuk Art Museum, generously supported by the Government of Greenland’s Pools and Lottery Fund and Royal Arctic Line.