The settlements are mainly built inside bays and always along the coast, even though the relationship with the sea is denied for many months by a layer of ice that sits on the water, to the point that the sea itself offers endless pathways during the winter.

Airports are the chief resources of these communities. At Iqalit, the airport is closely connected with the urban layout of the settlement and the area in front of it seems to be the principal public space while its bright colour makes it an urban icon and a recognisable landmark for the town. As well as a number of buildings for services, schools, research centres, recreational centres, these settlements are made up of houses that use models and typologies that come from the south, possibly made more efficient from an energy point of view but with little attention given to traditional forms of defence against the snow, ice and winds that belonged to the Inuit.

The interesting aspect of the exhibition at the Canadian pavilion is not so much the incisiveness or meaningfulness of a topic of research but rather how the exhibition describes the transition of a totally atypical territory towards modernity. The exhibition presents an unknown region, partly primitive, at the same time portraying a landscape that is strong and essential, unique and unrepeatable, a landscape that lies almost on the borders between reality and imagination.

A territory that has only marginally “absorbed modernity” in as much as it is totally extraneous to the processes of transformation that have affected other regions and anomalous with respect to the dynamics that have favoured contemporary development. Modernity in this region has always been declined according to technical demands and functional efficiency to guarantee to all the community an acceptable standard of living and access to basic services.

The tension between diversity and integration has been consumed with the hope that modernity becomes a solution to problems. The result is that young Inuits watch on average more hours of television than those of the same age in the rest of Canada and fries and coca-cola have quickly replaced foods that were more calibrated with respect to climate and local availability.

The crucial question is therefore how remote territories, populations and regions can confront modernity and how this marries with local traditions. In fact precisely due to this perhaps unresolved contradiction, the Canadian pavilion received a mention from the jury of the Biennale, for “the extensive study of how modernity manages to adapt in unique climatic conditions and to the demands of a cultural minority”.