Exploring Greenlandic Culture and Traditions through Artistic Collaboration

As a multimedia artist, I seek to learn about Greenlandic culture and traditions through research and artistic collaboration, learning about Greenland’s stories, landscapes, and people, exploring the essence of its identity.

Multimedia artist Les Joynes (b 1963, California) builds cross-cultural connections through artistic collaboration. In 2005, he began learning about Greenlandic cultures, history, oral traditions, and mythology— including Inuit legends of nature. Les seeks to initiate an art project in Greenland in 2025. This will include meeting Greenlandic artists, visiting cultural centers like Nuuk Katuaq, the Greenland Cultural Center, the Nuuk Art Museum, the Greenland National Museum of and Archives and learn about Greenlandic culture from local artists, scholars, cultural practitioners and individuals who wish to share their stories.

Artistic Research: According to the UNESCO definition, research is “any creative systematic activity undertaken in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge about humanity, culture and society, and the use of this knowledge to devise new applications.” (OECD 2008, Journal for Artistic Research, 2024). Artistic experiences are forms of reflection. Since his training in artistic research in London in the 1990s, Les has been using artistic research as a vehicle for his practice and for discovering the lenses through which we perceive cultures. In Greenland, Les will explore local practices such as tupilak carving, drum dancing, or storytelling, integrating these traditions with shared artmaking methodologies. Collaborating fosters mutual exchange, creating a shared space which allows artists from different cultural backgrounds to explore diverse perspectives.

About the artist: Born in California, Les Joynes’s work is deeply rooted in exploring cultural identities, historical narratives, and the impact of place on human experience. Using a bundle of media practices including photography, sculpture, painting, performance and moving image, Joynes transforms the studio where the public can experience these investigations as they explore materials, body movements, and shared spaces.

Fieldwork: Including on-site visits, meetings with local artists, craftspeople and culture specialists, fieldwork is an essential component of artistic research. It is the site for cross-cultural experimentation and learning. As it is inherently performative, fieldwork is integral to the creative practice and is shared in museum exhibitions, writing and the artworks created in each site. Les has served as Research Fellow at the University of the Arts London Research Center on Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN) and has led field research projects in Brazil, Japan, South Korea, China, India and France. As a research specialist in art and education, he has been active in the Columbia University Visiting Scholar & Scientist Program since 2009 including Fulbright projects in Mongolia, China, India and Sri Lanka.

Les is a Fellow of the Explorers Club in New York and the Royal Anthropological Institute in London. He is currently examining indigenous heritages amongst Barrow Sea communities and was sponsored as Nordic Artists Center Artist in Norway to explore local mythologies in Sunnfjord including Sami heritage. Recipient of the Fulbright Hays Award, he posted to Mongolia in 2014 where he studied performance and stories from nomadic reindeer herding communities and created a US-Mongolian collaboration which combined contemporary experimental music with traditional performance for a national museum in Ulaanbaatar which also featured at Thomas Jaeckel Gallery in New York.

His work has featured in Art in America, Art Monthly London, Journal for Artistic Research (JAR), University of Indiana Press, Chithravathi (Magazine) India, Serbian Museum of Contemporary Art [catalogue], Long Museum Shanghai, Going Beyond: Art as Adventure, Newcastle Australia, Anywhere v.1. University of Melbourne, LeRoy Neiman Foundation [catalogue]; Octopus, Journal for Visual Culture. University of California Irvine and Springer, Vienna.

Specialized in cross-cultural collaboration, Les holds a BA (Hons) Fine Art from Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, BA (cum laude) History from Boston University, MA Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London, MA Fine Art from Musashino Art University in Tokyo and M.Sc. Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB) Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences in Belgium. Joynes furthered his research on cross-cultural collaboration during his PhD from the Faculty of Art, Environment, and Technology at Leeds Metropolitan University in the UK and Postdoctorate at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. He was EU Erasmus Scholar at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts.

He is recipient of the Japan Ministry of Culture/ MeXT Scholarship, the Taiwan Ministry of Education Scholarship, Fulbright US Public Diplomacy Awards for China and Mongolia and is ZERO1 Art and Technology Artist Artist and serves as a selector for Japan Contemporaries. He served on the curatorial team that produced the 1998 Taipei Biennial at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in Taiwan and has curated and produced exhibitions in Tokyo, London, Beijing and New Delhi. He currently serves on the National Selection Committee for the Institute for International Education (IIE) and Fulbright.

His work has featured at the National Museum of Taiwanese Literature (2023), ByWoods Gallery, Kaohsiung, Taiwan (2023), Douba Film Festival, China (2019), Inside Out Art Museum, Beijing (2017), Museum of Brazilian Arts (MAB-FAAP), Sao Paulo, Brazil (2015), Zanabazar Museum of Fine Art, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia (2014), 976 Gallery, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Launch for Venice Biennale (2014), Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado, São Paulo (2013), Brazilian Museum of Sculpture, São Paulo (2012), Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture, Korea (2012), Fenberger House Museum, Nagano, Japan (2012), Gallery Thomas Jaeckel, New York (2011), Welsh Museum of Modern Art, UK (2010), Treignac Projet, France (2010), Bauhaus Foundation, Dessau, Berlin and Queenstown, Singapore (2009), Åmotgård Museum, Bygstad, Norway (2008), Michael Steinberg Fine Art, New York (2008), New General Catalog, New York (2007), CBGB New York (2006), Space, London (2005), Romo Gallery, Atlanta (2005), Mizuma Gallery Tokyo (2005), Bergstübl Mitte, Berlin (2004), Mars, Tokyo (2003), Tactical Museum/ AIT, Tokyo (2002), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2001), Nylon, London (2000), Asahi Contemporary Art 2000 Tokyo (2000), Bangkok Experimental Film Festival (1999), Tatsumi Orimoto Space, Kawasaki, Japan (1999), Casa, Tokyo (1998), Norimatsu Museum, Japan (1997), Milch, London (1996), Barbican, London (1995). His work is in private and public collections in Asia, Europe and the Americas. Les is represented by Gallery Thomas Jaeckel in New York.