The People

(Note: people photographed in this post aren't connected to my project.)

Oddly enough, sometimes people here in Nuuk remind me a lot of people in Japan. It could be the looks; many simply look Asian. There's an Indonesian exchange student here who I at first thought was Greenlandic. She told me she gets a lot of Greenlanders even thinking that, coming up to her and trying to speak Greenlandic. The language sounds a bit like Japanese too, there are lot of the same syllables. It often also sounds like the Greenlandic use similar little filler sounds like the Japanese, like "maa" or "eeh". But it's hard to say, because I don't understand any Greenlandic so those might actually have some other meaning.

Is it okay to say that I find people's faces here interesting? Is it racist? I think many Greenlandic women are really beautiful, I like their faces and their hair. I like the habit of putting their hair in a bun on top of their heads; looking at old depictions of Inuits, it seems to be a very old, traditional habit. It still looks good and is actually super trendy and no, I'm not just saying that because I also really like keeping my hair in a bun on top of my head.


Then there are the same type of small, slim older women made of iron here that there were in Japan. They're incredibly tiny but they look as tough as a whip. Their body shapes remind me of my sister, who's a professional acrobat, meaning basically just made of muscle. They are really sweet even if they look tough, though. I've spoken to some women regarding my project and they have been incredibly kind and sweet. One of them hugged me goodbye and it was a real, warm hug, not just a random bye, see ya -type of hug.


I've met a lot of internationals and exchange students, I guess it's quite natural for foreigners to seek the company of other who are sort of strange waters here. There's a Finnish girl here I've met many times, it's really refreshing to talk to somebody in my own language every now and then. Through her I've met people from Denmark and Germany, among others. The exchange students have a kind of an enviable little community and I sometimes really miss studying. When you're a student, you're still full of hope for the future. You know. That sounded bad. But you're up-and-coming, when you're a student. You still have hope that you might find a job. There's that wonderful, precarious little moment just before you graduate, when you feel you can take over the world. When you're almost finished studying, when you're almost at that one little moment when you've graduated and you're the best! And you don't realize the fall that comes after that. Because once you enter the job market, you're no longer the awesome person who just got through school and wrote a kick-ass thesis, you're that new person nobody wants to hire because you don't know anything yet.

Sorry! Maybe it will be different for you. (It wont.)

Seriously, didn't mean to be a downer. That's just how it went for me. In conclusion: I miss being a student because then you could experiment with all kinds of stuff at school and had teachers and mentors but I also don't miss it because there's a lot of pressure and sometimes it's also fun to be a "free" artist and just do weird stuff, even if there's also pressure there. So, let's enjoy the place we're in, no matter what it is. Also, there are a lot of fields where it's much easier to find a job than in the art field.


In general, I think people are quite kind here. People stop their cars to let you pass the road. Sometimes I run across the road when a car is coming, because that's what you do in Finland, where people don't stop their cars for pedestrians. Maybe people here think I'm nuts when I'm running when they'd be completely ready to stop their cars and let me pass.

Today, I went to the dump yard to see if there was any stuff I could use for my project. On their website, it said they have some kind of a recycle point where you can take stuff people leave there. So I find a bus in the snowstorm, trek to a weird industrial district I know nothing about. I wander around and eventually end up in some area where men in orange overall stop me and I try to ask them to speak in English. In the end, I explain my errand and one of them takes me to two big containers. One has an ugly old mattress and another one has a worn out table. That's it. The man looks at me and asks: "No good?" I'm trying to smile and be like, sorry, just thought I'd come and see. I think he might have thought I was nuts. But I'm just an artist, trying to find out what's available out there. Totally normal!

I think it's always the part of the tourist to look a bit dumb. I often feel that here, like I did in Japan. I think you just have to embrace it. It can be a bit tiring, though


The photos are of an architecture student named Anne who came to the museum for my meet and greet when she was visiting Nuuk for a project. She let me take some photos of her, thank you Anne!