Squarebody Resolute

The task-based project Squarebody Resolute, saw the artist Chris Boyne source a former Government of Canada squarebody truck (squarebody is an appellation that describes 1973-1987 General Motors trucks) from Resolute, Nunavut (ᖃᐅᓱᐃᑦᑐᖅ in Inuktitut: romanized: Qausuittuq,  ‘place with no dawn’). These trucks were procured by Environment Canada, Transport Canada, Natural Resources Canada, the RCMP and other government departments and assigned to the High Arctic. When the trucks reached the end of their service lives, they were decommissioned and eventually cast off. The trucks now share similar states: rust-free because of the climate with low mileage but beat up from years of abuse and picked over. Through performing the deceivingly simple action of returning a single derelict truck from the North, the artist hopes to highlight the complex system that leads to the unidirectional transfer of industrialized materials to the Arctic and the interrelatedness between that transfer of materials, arctic sovereignty and settler colonialism.  The project entailed sourcing the former Environment Canada 1986 GMC Sierra 3500 3+3 truck from Resolute and having it transported to Montréal via arctic sealift ship.  The project culminates with the exhibiting the vehicle itself as a large-scale sculptural object.

Squarebody Resolute considers the materiality of the truck as an object that simultaneously embodies the multiple positionalities of derelict vehicle, commodity, enthusiast item, repository of historical and technical knowledge and art-object. The action at the center of Squarebody Resolute could only be accomplished by a funded artist as government, industry and individuals have deemed shipping materials from the Arctic back to the south prohibitively expensive. Instead, new materials are sent north during annual sealifts. This unidirectional flow of materials results in an accumulation of abandoned technology in communities like Resolute, Grise Fiord and Igloolik.  The project Squarebody Resolute seeks to reverse this reality. The act of removing an industrialized object from the North contrasts with traditions of natural resource extraction, the establishment of settlements to assert arctic sovereignty and historical exploitation of indigenous communities. If the truck itself can be read as a symbol of colonialism, then its return to the South is meant to act as a gentle gesture of reconciliation.

Photos: Jake Hanna