CONTENTS
31.2
Inuit Art Quarterly Skin
Front
Features
Back
04 Contributors
26 Skin Stories
56 Sealskin Stencils
LEGACY
05 From the Editor 10 Message from the Board 10 Foundation Update 5 WORKS
12 Tattooed Skin HIGHLIGHTS
From the iconic to the personal, this portfolio traces the one-of-a-kind histories of several objects, garments and artworks made from skin. In these profiled works, caribou fur, weasel pelts and sealskin are deftly reworked and reimagined to transmit familial histories, national impact and cultural resilience. The IAQ is delighted to share this unique collection, accompanied by their singular stories.
14 A sneak peek at some current
and upcoming exhibitions and projects. CHOICE
18 Elisapee Inukpuk by Asinnajaq CHOICE
20 Echo Henoche by Mark David Turner PROFILE
22 Ooloosie Saila by John Geoghegan
Page 22 Ooloosie Saila’s whimsical drawings are just the beginning for this bright young artist
Bringing together the work of three circumpolar Indigenous artists spanning Canada, the US and Norway, this feature traces the political, cultural and aesthetic impact of using skin, fur and bone as foundational and transformative artistic materials.
by Britt Gallpen 40 Soft Shapes and Hard Mattresses: Sex and Desire in Contemporary Inuit Graphic Art and Film
Despite the fact that love and sex in the Canadian Arctic is not new, images of erotic scenes have rarely graced our pages. A writer and curator pushes past voyeuristic taboos to bring us into the pulse of recent erotic Inuit art.
by Daniella Sanader
For the past two and a half years, the Inuit Tattoo Revitalization Project has travelled the Canadian Arctic to give dozens of Inuit women traditional kakiniit and tunniit, reclaiming a near lost art form. In this interview, presented in English and Inuktut, we hear from the photographer chosen to document this unprecedented project and the stories of healing and community she has captured.
by John Geogeghan 1
by Susan Gustavison CURATORIAL NOTES
58 Annie Pootoogook: Cutting Ice
A curator reflects on the immense impact and lasting legacy of the groundbreaking, late graphic artist on the occasion of her first career retrospective.
32 Surface Tensions: Maureen Gruben, Sonya Kelliher-Combs and Joar Nango
48 Healing Ink: An Interview with Cora DeVos
Skin
The romantic idea of the use of sealskin stencils in Inuit printmaking has long captivated collectors and aficionados— but did it really work? In this editorial, a curator and author looks at the origins of this remarkable practice, putting the question to rest once and for all.
by Nancy Campbell REVIEW
62 Field Guide: Determined by the river Remai Modern by Alison Cooley REVIEW
64 niigaanikwewag Art Gallery of Mississauga by Thirza Cuthand TRIBUTE
66 Lukie Airut Elisapee Inukpuk Sam (Samuel) Sarick 68 News LAST LOOK
72 Tabea Murphy
ON THE COVER
Maureen Gruben (b. 1963 Tuktoyaktuk) — Survival (detail) 2018 Sealskin, beads, deer hide, ribbon and metal clasps on canvas 152.4 × 121.9 cm PHOTO KYRA KORDOSKI
Front
CANADA’S Now, more than ever, Canada needs independent, fact-based journalism.
CONVERSATION
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Asinnajaq, artist and curator
Home to the largest public collection of contemporary Inuit art on earth. Thousands of artworks, thousands of stories to share.
MASTHEAD
CONTRIBUTORS
PUBLISHER
EDITORIAL
Nancy Campbell
The Inuit Art Quarterly is published by the Inuit Art Foundation.
Executive Director and Publisher Alysa Procida
Nancy Campbell, PhD, has been a curator for the past 20 years. She has held positions at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the University of Guelph, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection and The Power Plant. In 2006 she curated a solo exhibition of artist Annie Pootoogook for The Power Plant, which then travelled nationally and internationally. She has since curated exhibitions on Shuvinai Ashoona, Ohotaq Mikkigak and Samonie Toonoo, among others. In 2017 she authored the monograph Shuvinai Ashoona: Life and Work. PAGE 58
Established in 1987, the Inuit Art Foundation is a not-for-profit charitable organization that provides support to Canada’s Inuit arts communities and is the sole national body mandated to promote Inuit artists and art within Canada and internationally. This magazine relies on donations made to the Inuit Art Foundation, a registered charitable organization in Canada (BN #121033724RR0001) and the United States (#980140282). The Inuit Art Foundation gratefully acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through contributions from the Inuit Relations Directorate, Northern Governance Branch, Northern Affairs Organization, at Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada. Subscriptions subscribe@inuitartfoundation.org Canada: $33/yr. Excludes GST/HST. US: $44/yr. Elsewhere: $48/yr. GST/HST #121033724RT0001. The Inuit Art Quarterly is a member of Magazines Canada. Publication date of this issue: June 15, 2018 ISSN 0831-6708 Publication Mail Agreement #40050252 Postmaster send address changes to Inuit Art Foundation. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Inuit Art Foundation 215 Spadina Avenue, Suite 400 Toronto, ON, M5T 2C7 (647) 498-7717 inuitartfoundation.org ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRODUCTION WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN. THE INUIT ART QUARTERLY IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR UNSOLICITED MATERIAL. THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THE INUIT ART QUARTERLY ARE NOT NECESSARILY THOSE OF THE EDITORS OR THE INUIT ART FOUNDATION. PRINTED IN CANADA. DISTRIBUTED BY MAGAZINES CANADA. FROM TIME TO TIME WE MAKE OUR SUBSCRIBERS’ NAMES AVAILABLE TO COMPANIES WHOSE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES WE FEEL MAY BE OF INTEREST TO YOU. TO BE EXCLUDED FROM THESE MAILINGS, PLEASE SEND YOUR REQUEST, ALONG WITH A COPY OF YOUR SUBSCRIPTION MAILING LABEL, TO THE ADDRESS ABOVE.
Editor Britt Gallpen Assistant Editor and Circulation Manager John Geoghegan Copy Editor Simone Wharton Editorial Assistant Claire Christopher Advertising Nicholas Wattson Design Tung Colour Gas Company
Cora DeVos
Printing Sonic Print
Cora DeVos is a photographer based in Vermilion, AB. She is the owner of Little Inuk Photography, a name that celebrates both her short stature and her cultural heritage. DeVos specializes in portrait photography and focuses on empowering women through her art. She works with the Inuit Tattoo Revitalization Project and has been documenting the tattoos and stories of women participating in the project since 2016. In 2017 her photography was included in the publication Reawakening Our Ancestors’ Lines. PAGE 48
— Programs Coordinator Camille Usher Inuit Artist Database Program Coordinator Ashley McLellan Inuit Artist Database Program Officer Emma Steen Igloo Tag Program Coordinator Bryan Winters Inuit Art Foundation Archives Officer Yuling Chen
Susan Gustavison
—
BOARD OF DIRECTORS President Mathew Nuqingaq | Iqaluit, NU Chair Sammy Kudluk | Kuujjuaq, QC Secretary-Treasurer Beatrice Deer | Montreal, QC Jamie Cameron | Toronto, ON Patricia Feheley | Toronto, ON Heather Igloliorte | Montreal, QC Helen Kaloon | Uqsuqtuuq, NU —
EDITORIAL ADVISORY COUNCIL Mary Dailey Desmarais Kim Latreille Samia Madwar Sarah Milroy Taqralik Partridge
Daniella Sanader Daniella Sanader is a writer who regularly explores associative and speculative modes of thinking and writing about contemporary art, that emphasize queer/feminist frameworks, messy feelings and embodied experience. She holds an MA in Art History from McGill University in Montreal and has written essays, reviews and texts for Canadian Art, C Magazine, Susan Hobbs Gallery, BlackFlash, Forest City Gallery and many others. She has curated projects for Vtape and Oakville Galleries and currently works as the Program and Publications Coordinator at Gallery TPW in Toronto, ON. PAGE 40
FUNDED BY THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA
Inuit Art Quarterly
Susan Gustavison has been a freelance curator of Inuit art for over 15 years. She is the author and co-author of numerous exhibition catalogues, including Northern Rock: Contemporary Inuit Stone Sculpture (1999) and Pitaloosie Saila: A Personal Journey (2017) and dozens of articles. During the nearly 10 years that she worked at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, she became Curator of Inuit and First Nations Art and organized some 50 exhibitions. She holds an MA from Concordia University in Montreal, QC, and a BA from the University of Toronto, ON, both in Art History. PAGE 56
4
Summer 2018
FROM THE EDITOR
Turn to page 40 to read about artists who explore intimacy, love and the human body in their works. Alethea Arnaquq-Baril (b. 1978 Iqaluit) — Aviliaq: Entwined (still) 2014 Video 15 min. COURTESY THE ARTIST
In the spring of 2016, Alethea Arnaquq-Baril’s landmark documentary Angry Inuk screened for the first time in Toronto, ON, as part of the Hot Docs Festival. The film, which was reviewed in our Fall 2016 issue (IAQ 29.3), details the fraught and ongoing political, economic and cultural impacts of anti-sealing sentiments, and of the policies they shape, on Inuit communities. Tracing the attempts of a group of Nunavummiut to halt and later reverse a 2010 European Union ban on seal products as well as Arnaquq-Baril’s own advocacy work, made famous through the #sealfie campaign, the filmmaker weaves a layered, multigenerational and multivocal account of the Inuit seal hunt today. The film deftly employs first-person narrative and dark humour to capture the frustrations and resiliency of a community that has been repeatedly made to justify its inherent right to the seal hunt, but also to environmental stewardship and self-determination—themes which are similarly present in the work of Maureen Gruben, whose piece Survival (2018) graces our cover. This issue brings together artists thinking and working at the intersections of a material that is inherently political and unequivocally personal: skin. Beginning with a Portfolio on garments, artworks and objects created from fur, hide and pelts, “Skin Stories” foregrounds the personal relationships and intergenerational histories that are often nestled between artists’ meticulous stitches. Three artists hailing from across the circumpolar world, Gruben, Sonya Kelliher-Combs and Joar Nango (from Canada, Alaska and Norway, respectively), are profiled in “Surface Tensions.” Each thoughtfully fuses familial and community memory into works that pair the organic with the synthetic to produce new composite forms, laden with history and meaning. The resulting works conjure, intentionally or not, the complex politics of identity and place in a globalized world, including the movements of goods and materials, as well as those of human bodies, through spaces, over borders and across distances—vast and small. Shifting to the tactility of the human form, Daniella Sanader’s Feature “Soft Shapes and Hard Mattresses” considers love, sex and desire in recent graphic works by Jutai Toonoo (1959–2015), Annie Pootoogook (1969–2016) and Shuvinai Ashoona, RCA. Through juxtapositions of intimacy and anonymity pictured in both imagined and quotidian spaces, Sanader’s piece captures
Skin
5
a vivid and nuanced view of erotic Inuit art that resists easy categorization. Finally, from drawing the body to drawing on it, our Features conclude with an interview with photographer Cora DeVos, who has documented the Inuit Tattoo Revitalization Project for the past two and a half years. This project, spearheaded by tattoo artist Angela Hovak Johnston, has seen dozens of women tattooed with traditional Inuit designs in three Arctic communities. DeVos has been the primary documentarian since the earliest days of the project. Presented in both English and Inuktut, we hear from the photographer on the powerful experience of capturing the unique stories of these women, as they reclaim and celebrate their cultural heritage. This summer issue, which leads with works by contemporary artists, is complemented by a legacy editorial by Susan Gustavison that looks closely at the history of sealskin stencilling in early Inuit printmaking and the persistent narratives surrounding their use. From a focus on the body itself, to that which covers or adorns it, I hope you find the diverse meditations on skin in this issue provocative, engaging, thoughtful and nuanced. Britt Gallpen Editor
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PHOTO LISA GRAVES
“By giving to the Inuit Art Foundation, you ensure that artists are supported and celebrated in the development of their work, and that in turn they can spend more of their time creating. On behalf of the Board of Directors, I’d like to thank our donors for their immense enthusiasm and generosity.”
HEATHER IGLOLIORTE BOARD MEMBER, INUIT ART FOUNDATION
Sustainers $5,000+ Susan M. Carter Patrick Odier John and Joyce Price (KAMF) The Herb and Cece Schreiber Foundation and one anonymous donor
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Nakummek!
You, the generous donors listed below, ensure the Inuit Art Quarterly is published and that artists throughout Inuit Nunangat are supported and celebrated. Your gift provides stable funding for our programs year-round and encourages the exciting future of Inuit art. The Inuit Art Foundation relies on the kind support of donors like you to do this important work and is pleased to recognize donors who have contributed between March 2017 and March 2018. Thank you so much! Katarina Kupca Christine Macinnes Kathryn C. Minard Joyce Nies and Peter Witt (Publications) Joram Piatigorsky Paul Pizzolante Mark Richardson Sanford and Deborah Riley Mark Rittenhouse Leslie Roden-Foreman Barbara Turner Gail Vanstone
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Patricia McKeown Richard Mohr, in honour of Heather Beecroft (Publications) The New York Community Trust, Bell-Jacoby Family Fund Margaret Newall Allan P. Newell Michael J. Noone Sharon and Lee Oberlander, in honour of David Ruben Piqtoukun (Publications) Susan A. Ollila Paula Santrach Celine Saucier Muriel Smith Michael and Melanie Southern Elizabeth Steinbrueck Cedar Swan Jay and Deborah Thomson (Publications) Carol Thrun David and Catherine Wilkes (Publications) and two anonymous donors (KAMF [1])
$100–$249 Amy Adams John and Sylvia Aldrich Lea Algar-Moscoe Paul Alkon Diana Antoon, in memory of Saleem J. Antoon Jim Bader Heather Beecroft Catherine Birt Karen Brouwers, in honour of Elisapee Ishulutaq Tobi Bruce Peter Camfield Mary Campbell Summer 2018
THANK YOU
$100–$249 cont’d Carol Cole, in honour of Billy Gauthier Celia Denov Sophie Dorais Ginette Dumouchel, in honour of Tommy Niviaxie (KAMF) Leslie Eisenberg Ed Friedman Britt Gallpen and Travis Vakenti Judith Gavin Barbara A. Goetzelman Claire S. Gold Deborah D. Gordon Nelson Graburn, in honour of Katsuak Tumasi Carol Gray John A. Hanjian Tekla Harms Carol Heppenstall Ingo Hessel, in memory of Lucy Tasseor Albert Holthuis (Publications) James Igloliorte Mark Igloliorte Robert Jackson Rosi and David Jory Carola Kaegi Johanna Kassenaar William Kemp Nancy Keppelman Charles Kingsley Jo-Ann R. Kolmes Ellen Lehman (Endowment) Joe and Sandra Lintz Dr. Marie A. Loyer Maija M. Lutz
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Give the gift that always fits! To learn more about donating on behalf of a friend or loved one visit: www.inuitartfoundation.org/support/give
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Please Consider Supporting the Next 30 Years: How You Can Help Donations are essential to the programs that promote and celebrate Inuit art and artists. As a registered charitable organization in Canada (BN #121033724RR0001) and the United States (#980140282), the Inuit Art Foundation welcomes donations, sponsorships, legacy gifts and in-kind contributions.
The Inuit Art Foundation wants to hear from you! Contact us at contact@inuitartfoundation.org or 647-498-7717. 9
Front
FOUNDATION UPDATE
MESSAGE FROM THE BOARD
An Exciting Summer PHOTO THE NUNAVUT ARTS & CRAFTS ASSOCIATION
As the only national organization supporting all art forms in the country, the IAF is pleased to support Inuit artists across Inuit Nunangat in achieving success. We are happy to showcase some of the IAF’s long-term impacts on artists’ careers.
This summer issue focuses on skin, a material that has allowed Inuit to thrive for centuries and one that continues to allow artists to make incredible artworks and clothing. Sealskin in particular is a powerful and important material used by artists, including myself, not only because it is plentiful in the Arctic, but also because it represents a strong connection to Inuit culture and history. I am very proud to share that for the first time the Kenojuak Ashevak Memorial Award will be given to an established artist to pursue a residency. Created in 2014 to honour the legacy and career of this important artist, this award will allow recipients to reach new creative heights. This award, and your support of it, means that artists have the opportunity to continue to experiment and grow. Finally, on behalf of the Board of Directors, I would like to say a big thank you to our outgoing Board Member Jimmy Manning for his years of hard work and dedication. I would also like to congratulate our IAQ team on their four National Magazine Award nominations. This is a major achievement, one of which we are all very proud. To know that our artists and their beautiful artworks reach so many people, and have such a large impact on them, is an incredible feeling. I’d like to thank you, our readers, for supporting us all these years. I hope you enjoy this issue! Helen Kaloon Board Member, Inuit Art Foundation
Kenojuak Ashevak Memorial Award Launched Established in 2014 to honour her unparalleled artistic legacy, the Kenojuak Ashevak Memorial Fund supports a visual artist to undertake a residency of their choice with up to $10,000 biennially. The IAF opened applications to the award for the first time in April 2018, after significant work to make the process relevant and culturally appropriate. Assessed by an Inuit-majority jury of curators and arts supporters, the inaugural winner will be announced this summer to cap off the IAF’s thirtieth anniversary celebrations. The IAF would particularly like to thank the donors who made this award possible: John and Joyce Price, David Burns, Paul Machnik, Christopher Bredt and Jamie Cameron, François Dumaine, Ginette Dumouchel, Carol Ann Ellett, Patricia Feheley, Rawlson O’Neil King, Maija M. Lutz, Catherine Madsen, Marcia Miller, Suzanne Nash, Ann Sprayregen and three anonymous donors. To learn more about this award and to support it, visit inuitartfoundation.org/programs/awards.
Follow us on Twitter: @InuitArtFdn Like us on Facebook: Inuit Art Foundation Follow us on Instagram: inuitartfoundation Inuit Art Quarterly
OPPOSITE
Sobey Art Award–nominated artist Couzyn van Heuvelen took control of the IAF’s instagram account in March when he was in Qamani’tuaq for an artist residency.
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Summer 2018
FOUNDATION UPDATE
Upcoming Igloo Tag Consultations The Inuit Art Foundation is finalizing its summer consultation schedule for the Igloo Tag Trademark, which will kick off at the Nunavut Arts Festival in Iqaluit, NU, this July. To participate, please check the IAF’s website for dates, online survey opportunities and consultation results.
Couzyn van Heuvelen Long-Listed for the Sobey Art Award The IAF is thrilled to announce that the Sobey Art Award, Canada’s most prestigious award for young artists, has long-listed Couzyn van Heuvelen from Iqaluit, NU. Readers of the IAQ will be familiar with van Heuvelen, who has been regularly featured in the magazine since 2016. Van Heuvelen is only the third Inuit artist to receive this honour. The IAF has worked with van Heuvelen since 2016, when it sponsored iNuit Blanche, which included his installation Avataq. Van Heuvelen was later featured in an IAQ Profile (29.4), its Collecting Guide in Fall 2017 and most recently as part of “To the Bone: Spirits, Skulls and Stories” (IAQ 31.1), as well as in reviews of iNuit Blanche and Insurgence/ Resurgence. Van Heuvelen’s Avataq was also the IAF’s first featured artist project at Art Toronto in 2017. Finally, van Heuvelen was the IAF’s first Instagram “take over” artist, during his residency at the Jessie Oonark Centre in Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake), NU. “I think [the IAF] is one of the best ways for Inuit artists to reach a wider audience,” said van Heuvelen. “[Art Toronto] gave [people] a chance to see my work in person and also in the context of the Inuit Art Foundation. I felt so promoted [and] received so much attention.”
© INUIT ART FOUNDATION, 2018
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National Magazine Awards The Inuit Art Foundation is delighted to announce that the Inuit Art Quarterly has been nominated for four National Magazine Awards in the following categories: Best Magazine: Art and Literary; Art Direction Grand Prix; and Best Editorial Package, for our landmark issue Anniversary: Celebrating 30 Years; and One of a Kind Storytelling, for our sprawling, multi-authored Portfolio “30 Artists to Know,” which featured contributions from 30 artists, curators, writers and arts administrators, including 18 Inuit contributors. This marks the second consecutive year that the IAQ has been short-listed for a Best Magazine award in the Art and Literary category; the first was for the inaugural Canadian Magazine Awards in 2017.
IAQ at the Digital Innovators’ Summit The IAQ continued to increase its presence on the world stage this past March when Publisher Alysa Procida attended the Digital Innovators’ Summit in Berlin. Procida was part of the Magazines Canada’s delegation, which included a diverse array of publications. This opportunity will allow the IAQ to continue to adapt to the rapidly changing landscape of publishing to make sure that the only magazine dedicated to Inuit artists continues to thrive in the digital landscape.
Jade Nasogaluak Carpenter and Jesse Tungilik Awarded Major Residencies For the first time, the Canadian Art Foundation in partnership with TD Bank Group have awarded both opportunities in their North South Artist Exchange Program to Inuit artists. In an innovative reimagining of the program, Iqaluit-based artist Jesse Tungilik will be undertaking a residency at the Banff Centre, while Calgary-based Jade Nasogaluak Carpenter will be heading to the Northwest Territories. Both the IAF’s Executive Director Alysa Procida and Board Member Heather Igloliorte served on this year’s jury. Nasogaluak Carpenter and Tungilik have both been featured in recent issues of the Inuit Art Quarterly: Nasogaluak Carpenter was most recently the subject of Spring 2018’s Profile (31.1), while Tungilik was featured in Choice in the IAQ’s Fall 2016 issue (29.3). To learn more, see Highlights in this issue. 11
To learn more about what we’re up to, visit us online at: inuitartfoundation.org
Become a Sustainer and help support the Inuit Art Foundation! Inuit Art Foundation Sustainers Program The Inuit Art Foundation relies on the generosity of donors like you to develop programming to support the work of Inuit artists. The IAF is excited to announce the launch of our Sustainers Program. All donors are recognized in the IAQ and on the website in the following categories: $5,000+ · Opportunity to be affiliated with a specific IAF project or program. · Annual luncheon with IAF to discuss new programs and explore new works by Inuit artists. · Opportunities to meet artists at special events and receptions. · A one-year subscription to IAQ. · Invitations to IAQ launches. · Acknowledgement in the magazine and on the website. $2,500+ · Annual luncheon with IAF to discuss new programs and explore new works by Inuit artists. · Opportunities to meet artists at special events and receptions. · A one-year subscription to IAQ. · Invitations to IAQ launches. · Acknowledgement in the magazine and on the website. $1,000+ · Opportunities to meet artists at special events and receptions. · A one-year subscription to IAQ. · Invitations to IAQ launches. · Acknowledgement in the magazine and on the website. $500+ · A one-year subscription to IAQ. · Invitations to IAQ launches. · Acknowledgement in the magazine and on the website. $250+ · Invitations to IAQ launches. · Acknowledgement in the magazine and on the website. $100+ · Acknowledgement in the magazine and on the website.
Front
5 WORKS
Tattooed Skin IAF staff share some of their favourite stitched, poked and inked works 2/
Germaine Arnaktauyok
Tattoo Lady (1999) Our skin bears the markings of our personal histories: each scar tells a story and each wrinkle marks the passage of time. Tattoos are also indelible marks that tell stories, but ones that a wearer intentionally shares. Germaine Arnaktauyok’s Tattoo Lady depicts a nude woman resplendently seated, proudly baring each piece of her personal biography. Each component of the design marks a significant moment in the woman’s life, with every gain, celebration and loss represented. The blue hue of her skin, coupled with her confident pose, evokes an aura of assured self-expression. Arnaktauyok’s woman has lived a full life, and she does not shy away from revealing it.
1/
Helen Kalvak, CM, RCA
My Hands (1982)
ASHLEY MCLELLAN
Inuit Artist Database Program Coordinator
My Hands by Helen Kalvak (1901–1984) is one of the strongest graphic images to come from Ulukhaktok (Holman), Inuvialuit Settlement Region, NT. The contrast between the artist’s highly detailed rendering of her elaborately tattooed forearms and her minimal depiction of the tools demands that the viewer’s focus be on her—her creativity, personhood and perspective. The composition, never quite symmetrical, adds to the image’s concern with uniqueness.
Helen Kalvak (1901–1984 Ulukhaktok) —
By the time of her death, Kalvak was the last woman in her community with traditional tattoos, which are enthusiastically celebrated here. That Kalvak chose to situate herself this way, in the artist’s only self-portrait in print, speaks powerfully to her sense of self and her artistic legacy.
ALYSA PROCIDA
Executive Director and Publisher
Germaine Arnaktauyok (b. 1946 Yellowknife) —
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RIGHT
My Hands 1982 Lithograph 28.5 × 38.5 cm
Tattoo Lady 1999 Etching 36.8 × 27.9 cm COURTESY WALKER’S AUCTIONS
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5 WORKS
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Alexander Angnaluak
Tattooed Hands (2017) This sculptural work by emerging artist Alexander Angnaluak is an early offering in what will undoubtedly be a robust and multifaceted career. Currently studying fine arts at Algonquin College in Ottawa, ON, Angnaluak has gained recognition for his precise and lyrical graphite drawings, but he has recently begun exploring other media. Tattooed Hands is an evocative piece that draws inspiration from the work of tattoo artist Angela Hovak Johnston and the
Inuit Tattoo Revitalization Project and is characterized by its confident use of line and composition. Rendered primarily in delicate plaster, Angnaluak’s imperfect hands capture a moment of process and transformation as the broken left pinky finger is carefully sutured, healed and made whole with stitches bearing the traditional markings of culture. BRITT GALLPEN
Editor
Alexander Angnaluak (b. 1992 Kugluktuk) — Tattooed Hands 2017 Plaster, needle and thread 15.2 × 20.3 × 25.4 cm COURTESY THE ARTIST
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Unidentified artist
Walrus Shaman with Tattooed Face (n.d.)
Ruth Ikinilik Tapatai
Tattooed Faces and Ulus (2009) Ruth Ikinilik Tapatai’s colourful wall hanging Tattooed Faces and Ulus is a celebration of Inuit womanhood. Twenty uluit (women’s knives) dance around the edges, framing the central composition of two faces that look out from inside the border. Both are immediately recognizable as women because they bear tunniit, facial tattoos worn by Inuit women. The choice of embroidery to capture kakiniit (tattoos) is particularly poetic. Traditionally a master seamstress used a needle threaded with sinew and soot as pigment to apply kakiniit. In this wall hanging, Tapatai celebrates the skills and designs developed over generations by Inuit women, employing contemporary needlework to honour the stitches of those who came before. JOHN GEOGHEGAN
Assistant Editor and Circulation Manager
Although this sculpture from Uqsuqtuuq (Gjoa Haven), NU, may carry an expression of surprise, each mark is deliberate. Caught mid-transformation, the shaman is dynamic, shifting between human and animal forms and creating a sense of unity that courses through the work. The horizontal lines on the flipper mirror the straight lines on the shaman’s face, while the circular indentations of the flipper’s bone cavities perfectly match those of the parka sleeve and of the shaman’s tattoos. The tattoos also indicate an outward movement; they form triangles whose bases extend past the boundary of the face, signifying an extension of the shaman’s spirit as he transforms. Though this piece shows a moment of flux, the human and walrus ultimately become one—if only for a brief moment.
Unidentified artist (Uqsuqtuuq) —
CLAIRE CHRISTOPHER
Editorial Assistant Skin
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Ruth Ikinilik Tapatai (b. 1957 Qamani’tuaq) —
LEFT
ABOVE
Walrus Shaman with Tattooed Face n.d. Stone, bone, hair and antler 21.6 × 29.2 × 8.9 cm
Tattooed Faces and Ulus 2009 Stroud, thread and embroidery floss 68.6 × 94 cm
COURTESY WADDINGTON’S
COURTESY WADDINGTON’S
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HIGHLIGHTS
Exhibition Highlights A behind-the-scenes look at some notable projects on view now
To see a full list of exhibitions, visit our enhanced calendar online at: calendar.iaq.inuitartfoundation.org
JUNE 1–AUGUST 1, 2018
Resilience National Billboard Project CANADA WIDE
For two months the art of 50 Indigenous women will occupy 167 locations across Canada, from coast to coast to coast. A mixture of digital and traditional billboards, as well as posters, will activate urban centres both large and small to highlight works by artists such as Heather Campbell, Annie Pootoogook (1969–2016) and Pitaloosie Saila, RCA. An interactive website will accompany the exhibition. Created by Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art (MAWA), the project is a response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s call for the inclusion of Indigenous histories and memory practices in Canada’s heritage. Lee-Ann Martin, curator of the project, speaks about it here:
The overarching premise of this project is the ongoing, national erasure and exclusion of Indigenous women. When I began looking at the works and thinking about what the artists were saying, it became about their resilience and their strength, and a number of themes came up. For example, what I call Indigenicity looks at the urban experience. Jade Nasogaluak Carpenter has a wonderful piece that talks about the loneliness and isolation of being an Inuk in the city. Environmental issues, too, and bodies of land and water emerge as important themes in the works. Nunavut (Our Land) (1992), by Kenojuak Ashevak, CC, ON, RCA (1927–2013), and Summer Sealift (2004),
by Shuvinai Ashoona, RCA, represent positive approaches. Heather Campbell takes a slightly more critical look with Nuliajuk in Mourning (2017), where she laments the contamination of the waters. It’s a very poignant work. Many works address the importance of bodies in traditional Indigenous knowledge and where that sits with these artists, today. Jennie Williams’ work Nalujuk Night in Nain (2016) talks about the ongoing Moravian Inuit tradition and the importance of sharing that knowledge with future generations. The idea has been a multigenerational approach to show the longevity and endurance of previous generations of artists while showing the resilience of younger artists’ going into the future. In Mohawk culture, there’s a word that’s understood as having durable lives: we outlast. The idea of resilience has been there since time immemorial, and in this project it’s embodied as endurance, adaptability and sovereignty in relation to the artworks of the women. There are such diverse approaches to the art and the subject matter. The aim of the exhibition is to show that diversity and the range of artwork being created today. – Lee-Ann Martin
Kenojuak Ashevak (1927–2013 Kinngait) — Nunavut (Our Land) 1992 Lithograph 230 × 370.5 cm REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION DORSET FINE ARTS
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HIGHLIGHTS
Katherine Takpannie (b. 1989 Ottawa) — Inuit Youth Performing Western Arctic Song “Scrapping Skins” (Simeonie Kisa-Knickelbein) at Inuit Pro Sealing Rally, Parliament, Ottawa, March 2018 2018 Digital photograph COURTESY ART GALLERY OF GUELPH
MAY 10–SEPTEMBER 5, 2018
Getting Under Our Skin Art Gallery of Guelph GUELPH, ON
Featuring recent works by Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, Katherine Takpannie, Tanya Tagaq, CM and Couzyn van Heuvelen, as well as selected works from the gallery’s permanent collection by Jessie Oonark, OC, RCA (1906–1985), Parr (1893–1969), Tivi Etook and Peter Pitseolak (1902–1973), this dynamic exhibition looks at the crucial role of the seal in Inuit life. We hear from curator Andrew Hunter on the project’s collaborative angle and its intersection between art and activism:
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The gallery has always, since its inception, collected the work of Inuit artists, so there’s a long history, and it’s important we develop programming that is more deeply connected to Inuit communities and artists—in the North, but also to Inuit living in this area. Alethea and I had been in conversation for some time about a project involving her film Angry Inuk (2016), which would be the anchor for an exhibition, when she shared some amazing images of Nunavut Sivuniksavut students at a pro-sealing rally on Parliament Hill taken by Katherine Takpannie that emphasized a real urgency. So the initial idea was to bring together selections of Alethea’s film in conversation with these photographs and works by Tanya Tagaq and Couzyn van Heuvelen, but also to engage Inuit youth to make selections from our collection that relate to the importance of seals and the seal hunt to Inuit culture. It’s really important to position the collection in relation to the critical, urgent issues of the moment—we can’t just show things. 15
This is particularly important in a community like Guelph that is well-known for its environmental movements. There are people here involved in the very organizations that Inuit have struggled to establish a dialogue with [around the seal hunt], and this is something that really comes through in Alethea’s film—this desire to have a conversation and the unwillingness of some to engage. These groups should be allies, which is also underlined in the film. If Inuit communities aren’t able to continue practicing the traditional hunt, then they will have no choice, for economic reasons, but to be pushed to be more involved in resource extraction and activities that have actual detrimental impacts on the environment. An important impulse of this exhibition has been to try to encourage conversation. The show will include a screening of Angry Inuk and other programming involving local and Ottawa, ON-based youth. We’re really working to invest in all the layers. – Andrew Hunter
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HIGHLIGHTS
JULY 1–AUGUST 2018
TD North South Artist Exchange Canadian Art Foundation INUVIK, NT, AND BANFF, AB
For several weeks this summer two Inuit artists will participate in self-directed residencies supported by the Canadian Art Foundation in partnership with TD Bank Group. Below we hear from each on their upcoming artistic research projects in Inuvik, Inuvialuit Settlement Region, and at the Banff Centre:
JADE NASOGALUAK CARPENTER PHOTO CHELSEA YANG
JESSE TUNGILIK PHOTO MIKI JACOBSEN
I’m going to Inuvik, starting in July for about four or five weeks, which is super exciting. When I was growing up, my brother and I spent a few summers there, so I have all these weird, vague memories. I also have a bunch of family there, so I think it will be cool to ask them about archival family knowledge. I’m going to be working on some new stone carvings that I’ve been wanting to make, so this will be the perfect time to revisit that. I’m still figuring out the best venue because I was imagining that I would work outside, but then my mom was giggling to herself, saying, “you do not want to work outside in the summer, you’re going to get eaten alive by bugs.” Being selected for this opportunity has been so amazing—to think, somebody’s rooting for you. I still can’t think of this as real because there are so many people involved who believe in me and it’s really incredible. – Jade Nasogaluak Carpenter
I’ve been talking with the Banff Centre and it’s looking like I’ll be spending five weeks there in July and August, so that should be great. The residency will be mostly selfdirected, but I’ll also have access to the centre’s studios and their specialists for when I need specific help. I’ve been to Banff before, but it was a long time ago, I think I was maybe 13 or 14, so this should be a whole new experience. I have a few projects that I’ve identified that I want to work on—all of them are contemporary, conceptual mixed-media sculptures. It’s still early, but one of the projects that I do want to work on is related to Nunavice Flag (2013) [ed. note: see IAQ 29.3]. The main thing that I want to focus on though is a sculptural series exploring different mediums, including 3D printing and casting, hopefully. I’m really looking forward to it. It’ll be nice to set aside some time to finally get those projects started. – Jesse Tungilik
Iqaluit to Greenland, there are no ships, and if I were to fly to Iqaluit, it would take me three days to get there, even though it’s only 300 or 400 kilometres away. So, this show didn’t happen, unfortunately, and it was then that Oh suggested I talk to Dorset Fine Arts (DFA) in Toronto, ON. The resulting exhibition started in Nuuk with 50 prints—beautiful work—from DFA. A lot of people have attended the show, and it’s been a joy to see people going round, looking at these prints and laughing because there’s a lot of humour in many of the pictures. Coming from Greenland, you know the motifs—the whales and the seals and the women’s knives. But the prints from Kinngait bring something extra that we don’t have in Greenland. Now the exhibition will travel up to Ilulissat, where it will be open for June, July and August, the period where we have thousands of guests from all over the world visiting our city. I’m hopeful that this is the start of many more artistic exchanges between Greenland and Canada. Both Nuuk Kunstmuseum and Ilulissat Kunstmuseum run artist residency programs, and we would very much like to see some artists from the Canadian Arctic or Alaska come here and stay here for awhile. Hopefully, this will also open some doors in Canada for Inuit artists from Greenland. – Ole Gamst-Pedersen
Meelia Kelly (1940–2006 Kinngait) — The Enchanted Owl 2005 Etching and aquatint 61.6 × 48.3 cm
JUNE 6–AUGUST 31, 2018
Cape Dorset Ilulissat Kunstmuseum ILULISSAT, GREENLAND
This summer, a travelling exhibition of more than four dozen prints from Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, will be on view in Ilulissat, Greenland—some 300 kilometres north of the Artic circle. After a successful first run at the Nuuk Kunstmuseum in the nation’s capital, Cape Dorset promises to draw big crowds during Ilulissat’s busy tourist season. We hear from the project’s lead curator on how this unique international show from Kinngait came about: At the museum we generally mount six to eight exhibitions a year, usually featuring artists from Europe and Greenland. However, for years I have wanted to show other Inuit art, especially from artists working in Canada and Alaska. In the early planning stages, I contacted Gyu Oh, Manager and Curator of the Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum in Iqaluit, NU, and asked her if she was interested in doing some work with us. She immediately invited one of our artists from Ilulissat to have a show at the museum, and then I found out how difficult it can be to do business with Canada! There are no direct planes from Inuit Art Quarterly
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© DORSET FINE ARTS
Summer 2018
TUNIRRUSIANGIT KENOJUAK ASHEVAK TIM PITSIULAK and
On now until August 12. Learn more at AGO.ca Organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario in partnership with Mobilizing Inuit Cultural Heritage, with the support of Dorset Fine Arts, a division of the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative
Lead Sponsor
Generously supported by
Government Partner
Goring Family Foundation The Willmott Bruce Hunter Foundation Heather M. & Richard M. Thomson
Kenojuak Ashevak, Bountiful Bird, 1986. Lithograph, 57.4 x 77.6 cm. Gift of Samuel and Esther Sarick, Toronto, 2002. © Estate of Kenojuak Ashevak
Organizing Partner
CHOICE
Elisapee Inukpuk Woman Adopts a Caterpillar
by Asinnajaq
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CHOICE
Elisapee has made an incredible contribution. Her work reminds me that my hands are precious tools, that I should keep them busy and that our stories are worth telling.
The materials list could be a poem. stone, steatite; skin, seal; skin, caribou; skin, sheep; fur, rabbit; fur, muskrat; wood Maybe it’s not a poem, but a recipe. It takes the magic of the artist to read it, to take the static materials in hand and turn them into a story and to use active hands to take an idea and turn these fine materials into anything one might imagine. For many years Elisapee Inukpuk (1938–2018) created a miniature world, made from cloth, skin, fur, twigs, grass and stone. A world populated by Inuit ingenuity: our tools, our activities and our stories. In this piece, stone and skin are stitched together to tell the story of the “Woman Who Adopted a Caterpillar.” A woman clothed in furs is seated, legs jutting straight out before her and back erect, in the centre of a twig sleeping mat, clutching a mitten. Only, “clutching” isn’t quite right, because she is holding it close to her, cradling the mitten. Curiously, out of the top of the mitten, pokes a furry black blob, punctuated with two bright yellow dots. They—what come to be known as eyes—are one of the first things you notice, but also the hardest to understand. You almost never see an auvvik (caterpillar) in a mitten. This is a scene of mother and child, or rather of a secret mother and child, to be exact. The work is a study in contrast between the two characters. The mother’s
smooth stone face is placed in relation to the auvvik’s furry head, peaking out of the smooth, tanned-skin mitten, this subtle detail is where Elisapee’s skills shine. Woman Adopts a Caterpillar (2003) is one doll in a special series that Elisapee was inspired to make after travelling around Nunavik listening to elders tell stories. Each of her careful and skillful cuts and stitches were made to help illustrate and bring life to this story. The children whom these stories are meant to reach were kept in mind each step of the way. These past years my great aunt Elisapee has created a world uniquely her own, one where Inuit tools, activities and stories live and thrive. Elisapee has made an incredible contribution. Her work reminds me that my hands are precious tools, that I should keep them busy and that our stories are worth telling. You can find more of Elisapee’s remarkable dolls as well as the stories that inspired them in Unikkaangualaurtaa/Let’s Tell a Story (2006), which contains stories, songs and games for children in Nunavik and beyond. — Asinnajaq is a visual artist, filmmaker, writer and curator. She is a member of the guest curatorial team for the Winnipeg Art Gallery Inuit Art Centre’s inaugural exhibition calendar as well as a member of the curatorial team for the Canada Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale.
Elisapee Inukpuk (1938–2018 Inukjuak) — Woman Adopts a Caterpillar (Auvvik) #1 2003 Steatite, sealskin, caribou skin, sheepskin, rabbit fur, muskrat fur and wood 23 × 18 × 27 cm AVATAQ CULTURAL INSTITUTE
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CHOICE
Echo Henoche Shaman
by Mark David Turner
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CHOICE
Henoche’s hand-drawn animation wastes nothing on unnecessary detail. Her establishing sequences at the beginning and end of the film use a palette of purples, yellows, reds and blues.
“The old people say, when you see the bear, a stranger is coming to Nain. And sometimes the strangers are looking for the secrets in the dark, dark hills.” These are the final lines of Rose Pamack’s version of “The Polar Bear in the Rock.” Well known to Nunatsiavummiut, this traditional story tells of a shaman who protects a camp from a polar bear by using his drum to turn the bear into stone. This stone is fixed within Mount Sophie, just across the harbour from Nain, the northernmost community in Nunatsiavut. As Pamack’s epilogue attests, and as I have come to learn, the bear is not always visible. But when it is, it serves as a harbinger for the possibility of mutual discovery. Shaman (2017) is a new telling of “The Polar Bear in the Rock” by Labrador Inuk visual artist Echo Henoche. Henoche began her career as a professional artist at the age of 13. Now at 21, she is likely the youngest person to tell this story to such a wide audience. Shaman is her first film, a collaboration with the National Film Board of Canada. Under the mentorship of producers, animators and filmmakers such as Katherine Baulu, Glenn Gear, Asinnajaq, David Seitz and Elise Simard, Henoche explores the secrets of those dark hills. The film is a decisive opening statement for a first-time filmmaker.
What is immediately striking about Shaman is the points of view it explores, all of which seem to be structured by the eponymous Shaman. We alternately see events from the vantage of the bear, the woman and child it chases, the camp itself, other fauna and even the animator. In a remarkable sequence of dramatic irony, the seemingly omniscient Shaman moves his right hand through a frame of drummers to grasp the opening passageway of an igloo as all things in the frame become his drum. He is the thing that structures these positions and events, even if he is not their architect. Henoche’s hand-drawn animation wastes nothing on unnecessary detail. Her establishing sequences at the beginning and end of the film use a palette of purples, yellows, reds and blues to create a textured and impressionistic landscape of Mount Sophie, seen from across the harbour. In both sequences, she plays with these textures to situate the story in a distant time by first subtracting and then adding colours. The main action of the film is rendered in black and white and, on occasion, with burning auras of faded yellow. In these frames, the details are sparse and subjective. Notice the polar bear’s eyes as it sees itself, as it is seen by its prey and as it is seen by the Shaman.
Austere and blended, the sound design and score reinforce the multiple perspectives Henoche is exploring. Luigi Allemano’s design focuses our attention precisely on the central action of each sequence. A polar bear sleeps, an igloo full of Inuit laugh, a mother moves her baby to the open air to soothe its crying. When the drumming begins, we audibly register it as non-diegetic before we visually recognize that it is, in fact, the work of the Shaman. It becomes the dominant element of both score and sound design. Here, the drum is given life by the late Karrie Obed, the celebrated Inuk musician, also from Nain. “In the very beginning, the rocks and the cliffs had spirits and it was all one.” These are the opening lines of Rose Pamack’s telling. Echo Henoche’s Shaman bears witness to this vision.
— Mark David Turner is a film historian, archivist and curator, who has worked extensively with communities in Nunatsiavut on audiovisual archives and media literacy. He is also an adjunct professor for the School of Music at Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Echo Henoche (b. 1997 Nain) — Shaman (stills) 2017 Video 5 min. NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA
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PROFILE
Ooloosie Saila
Ooloosie Saila (b. 1991 Kinngait) — Composition (Three Birds) 2016 Coloured pencil and ink 137.1 × 127 cm ALL ARTWORKS REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION DORSET FINE ARTS ALL COURTESY FEHELEY FINE ARTS
by John Geoghegan
Strange coloured mountains, always with a coastline, fantastic birds and winged creatures directly from Wonderland, these are some of the things that populate the drawings of Ooloosie Saila, one of the most original young artists working in Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, today. Saila began drawing in 2015, with her work gaining an almost immediate, enthu siastic following in the South. She counts Kenojuak Ashevak, CC, ON, RCA (1927–2013) as an important influence and fondly remembers watching the iconic artist making drawings in her home. Like Ashevak and Inuit Art Quarterly
her grandmother Pitaloosie Saila, RCA, Ooloosie Saila draws distinctive birds with a style uniquely her own. Owls with yellow eyes, as wide and as bright as headlights, and geese with long crooked necks reappear frequently across her work; all are rendered with sharp talons and spiky feathers. There is tremendous charm and comedy to these creatures, who sometimes sport eyebrows and moustaches that imbue them with a distinctive personality. In 2017 Saila’s first print was released in the Cape Dorset Annual Print Collection. Ornamental Owl, a whimsical stonecut in sunflower yellow 22
and inky black, features a bird, densely decorated with squiggles, stripes and dots, that is part owl, part bumblebee and maybe even part octopus. The print was an instant stand out in the collection and quickly sold out. Hundreds of prints from Kinngait have depicted birds, but few are as memorable or as humorous as Saila’s Ornamental Owl. What world could these strange birds inhabit? Certainly they would find their home in Saila’s otherworldly landscapes. Though Saila depicts the mountains and rock formations found in and around Kinngait, they are rendered fantastically with bulbous hills, undulating shorelines and puffy clouds. Her landforms are speckled with rocks, snow and vegetation, all in bold blocks and stripes of colour. Saila loves colour. Her drawings are filled with sumptuous reds and oranges, vibrant blues and teals, earthy browns and warm yellows. She also favours a bold, dark application of coloured pencil over shading or blending. Her use of colour-blocking and preference for flat compositions gives her work the impression of a patchwork quilt or a work by American modernist painter Milton Avery: bold, graphic and whimsical. Saila’s drawings have no straight lines. Her forms swell and pulse like the very environments by which she is inspired. In a community where many artists have embraced photography as an important part of their drawing practice, Saila has refused and instead embraces her own imagination, and the imprecision that comes with it. She begins her drawings with a pencil outline, which is then traced over with a fineliner and finally flooded with coloured pencil. Recently, she has been working on large format works that are well suited to her lush drawings of the expansive arctic landscape. Despite her relatively recent foray into drawing, Ooloosie’s work was included in the Imago Mundi exhibition and publication Inuit: Land of Arctic Ice (2017) and has been collected by the Winnipeg Art Gallery and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Saila will also soon be the subject of a solo exhibition at Feheley Fine Arts in Toronto, ON, where we anticipate her imaginative works and discernible style will continue to surprise and enchant their audiences. Summer 2018
PROFILE
ABOVE
Rock Formation 2017 Coloured pencil and ink 58.4 × 76.2 cm BELOW
Landscape with Rainbow 2016 Coloured pencil and ink 64.8 × 127 cm
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Inuit Art Quarterly
Quake, 2013 Jeneen Frei Njootli
Walrus Lure, 2015 Couzyn van Heuvelen
FAZAKAS GALLERY - COUZYN VAN HEUVELEN & JENEEN FREI NJOOTLI SOBEY ART AWARD LONGLIST NOMINEES 2018
Oviloo Tunillie R.C.A. Sedna 14 x 14 x 12 Inches
606 VIEW ST. VICTORIA, B.C. 250 380 4660 WWW.MADRONAGALLERY.COM
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Summer 2018
Spectacular Beings June 16 – July 15, 2018
Sixty years of fearsome and fantastical drawings from Kinngait. www.feheleyfinearts.com gallery@feheleyfinearts.com 65 George Street, Toronto 416 323 1373
Artwork: Artist Unknown, COMPOSITION (SEDNA TRANSFORMATION), ca. 1960, graphite
40 YEARS OF INUIT ART AT AUCTION Bringing collectors together
Christa Ouimet co@waddingtons.ca 416-847-6184 MANNO Polar Bear Reflection In Ice
275 King Street East, 2nd Floor Toronto, Ontario M5A 1K2
Sold at Waddington’s 1967 - $28 Illustrated TIME magazine, 1971 Waddington’s catalogue cover, 1978 - $6,000
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PORTFOLIO
Skin
Every object has a story. On the following pages we profile five works from across Inuit Nunangat with two important commonalities: each is made from animal skin and each carries within it a story begging to be told. For these garments, artworks and objects every stitch is a word, every seam a sentence and every pattern a theme. To learn about their unique histories we turned to people with close connections to them, revealing some of the surprising, personal and untold stories that these skin objects hold. A pair of fire-engine red mitts reveal familial connections as well as a unique curatorial project. A detailed cap made of loon skin, caribou fur and weasel pelts helps connect a community to a traditional dance. A sealskin wall hanging uses innovative technology to tell the story of one family’s struggles. A sealskin owl that travelled the world representing Canada has important meaning for the family of its creator. A caribou skin coat is more than a replica; for many Inuit today it is an important symbol of cultural resilience. Though each of the following works were made in different communities, at different times, all reveal important histories of tradition, resilience and (re)discovery. And although this list is hardly comprehensive, the objects and makers profiled on the following pages provide a small glimpse into the rich marriage of textile and narrative that is deeply woven across Inuit Nunangat.
Stories
Jeannie Arnaanuk (Iglulik) — Replica of angakkuq (shaman) Qingailisaq’s coat 1982 Caribou fur, cotton, cotton thread, sinew and cotton ribbon 109 × 81.5 × 15 cm GOVERNMENT OF NUNAVUT FINE ART COLLECTION; ON LONG-TERM LOAN WINNIPEG ART GALLERY PHOTO ERNEST MAYER
Replica of angakkuq (shaman) Qingailisaq’s coat 1982 —
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Qingailisaq’s wife Ataguarjugusiq made his exceptional coat to tell the story of his encounter with a female ijiraq (shapeshifter). The original was collected in the early 1900s for Franz Boas by Captain George Comer and is held at the American Museum of Natural History. Qingailisaq was an angakkuq (shaman), and this coat is said to be nearly identical to the one worn by the ijiraq. The garment was in storage for many years, and in the 1980s a group of women from Iglulik, NU, made reproductions of it. This one is now in the collection of the Government of Nunavut. The social history of this piece is thick with connections to anthropology, ethnography, museums, Inuit symbolism, oral histories and personal legacies. Many Inuit are proud of this particular belonging, especially the family of the seamstresses who made this reproduction. It demonstrates how a reproduction can have significant meaning to a community. Often replicas are seen as lesser objects and considered unauthentic. In this case,
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however, the reproduction is valued for what it represents: skilled workmanship by Inuit who recreated the original garment exactly as it was originally produced. There are personal connections to this garment by way of the group of seamstresses, led by Jeannie Arnaanuk, who made the reproduction in Iglulik. People remember watching and helping the women sew the garment and that has more significance than a machineor non-Inuit made replica. Traditionally an angakkuq would have very unique clothing with amulets, tools or belts. What strikes me are the kakiniit (tattoos) around the handprint wrists, which support the oral history behind the garment because women have tattoos and the ijiraq, whom Qingailisaq encountered, was a woman. Today, kakiniit connect to our cultural revitalization through the resurgence of tattooing, which creates a deeper link to the garment for many Inuit. This piece contributes to preserving our history and maintaining and continuing the oral traditions and art forms of Inuit. –Krista Zawadski
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Nattiqmut Qajusijugut (the seal that keeps us going) 2014 —
Ruben Komangapik (b. 1976 Iqaluit) — Nattiqmut Qajusijugut (the seal that keeps us going) 2014 Harp seal skin, indelible ink, steel, bronze, sterling silver, nylon cord and waxed nylon 114.5 × 180 × 6 cm COURTESY NATIONAL GALLERY OF CANADA
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I received a grant from the Government of Quebec to do a series of works with QR codes. I made this specific work for the Northern Lights conference and trade show in 2014. The harpoon head is made of bronze, with a sterling silver rivet, the shaft is made of antique steel with rope and lastly sealskin with permanent marker. I acquired the sealskin when I participated in a hunt with the Mi’kmaq on the Magdalen Islands. This work really pushed me outside of my comfort zone. I wanted to do something different from what I usually do, which is mostly carvings and metalwork. I wanted to make something that I had not seen before. At first I thought I would cut out the shape of the QR codes and sew it to the sealskin, but since the pelt was moulting, I tried a different technique. I projected the image of the QR code from a computer onto the skin and plucked off the white fur in the shape of the code. I then coloured the bare areas with a permanent marker so the code would read on a device. If you scan the code, it takes you to a YouTube video that I recorded. It tells a story of how a seal saved my family’s life. It is the story of a time when there was a famine and my grandfather caught a seal. That seal is the reason that I am here. You can watch the whole story here: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=FoBPcHSpzbc. –Ruben Komangapik
Summer 2018
Nahaaraq 1958 —
The nahaaraq is a hat traditionally worn by Copper Inuit during a drum dance. It is made of the bill of a loon, caribou skin and fur and weasel pelts, and it is worn by both men and women. My grandmother Rene Oliktoak and great-grandmother Helen Kalvak both made them in the 1950s and 1960s, but they have been made for much longer than that. The Copper Inuit have two kinds of dances: the first is performed with drummers dancing as they drum, and the second is performed directly after the drum song is finished. It is a freestyle dance called an upqangmiut and that’s when we use the nahaaraq and special mitts. If you can make the weasel on the cap twirl around when you are dancing, it shows that you are a very skilled dancer.
I have been doing quite a bit of research on Copper Inuit clothing and tools. I’ve even travelled to the British Museum and looked at and touched the objects that they have, including loon caps. After I got back, I made a cap using the design of one of the objects in their collection. There are many different processes used to make the nahaaraq. Skins need to be dehaired, dyed using red ochre (which people had to travel very long distances inland to collect) and stitched very carefully. They take weeks to make, even though we now use some commercial and non-commercial material. It must have taken my relatives a very long time in the past, because they would have been made in an igloo with very limited lighting. –Emily Kudlak
Helen Kalvak (1901–1984 Ulukhaktok) — Loon Dance Cap (Nahaaraq) 1958 Bird skin, sealskin, caribou skin, ermine pelt and sinew 38 × 18 cm PRINCE OF WALES NORTHERN HERITAGE CENTRE
3 Skin
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Skin Stories
Ookpik 1965–66 —
Jeannie Snowball was my grandmother. She was a strong woman. At a young age she lost her husband to tuberculosis. She raised her children by herself and hunted to provide for her family. She had many extraordinary talents, one being the ability to sew. She is known for designing the Ookpik doll that became famous after being shown at the Philadelphia Trade Fair in 1963. Ookpiks, stuffed sealskin owls with large, round eyes have travelled around the world and were an important symbol for Canada and especially the North. The Ookpik doll actually has an interesting story. In a moment of starvation my grandmother hunted an ookpik (owl) to feed her family. It saved her and her family. She was very grateful for that ookpik and honoured the soul of the ookpik in her thoughts. I believe this is why she first designed the Ookpik doll.
I was pretty much raised by my grandmother, and I remember her making Ookpiks as I was growing up throughout the 70s. There are many people who still make Ookpik dolls. You see them in the stores, gift shops and on sell/swap groups on Facebook. It makes me proud to see something that my grandmother made still resonates with people. I think my grandmother’s story, and the story of the Ookpik, has started to be forgotten. In Kuujjuaq, Nunavik, QC, I had a taxi company with an Ookpik doll on the side, representing her and our family, but only a few of the older people knew what that symbol meant. I think that we, Inuit, are a surviving people, and I think that the Ookpik represents that. –Etua Snowball
Jeannie Snowball (1906–2002 Kuujjuaq) — Ookpik 1965–66 Seal fur, hide and cotton thread 10.5 × 7 × 7 cm CANADIAN MUSEUM OF HISTORY
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Maria Merkuratsuk (b. 1958 Nain) — My Father’s Pattern 2015 Red sealskin, cowhide, fox tail, pile lining, cotton, sinew and thread 45.7 × 20.3 × 10.2 cm COURTESY THE ROOMS PHOTO NED PRATT PHOTOGRAPHY
My Father’s Pattern 2015 —
Skin
This pair of vibrant red, fox fur and sealskin mittens was created by Maria Merkuratsuk on the occasion of the travelling exhibition SakKijâjuk: Art and Craft from Nunatsiavut, which recently opened at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, and of which I am the curator. Begun in 2014, the initial planning stage for the exhibition involved extensive community consultation throughout the region, including meeting with artists to discuss the challenges they faced and their needs. We began each session by asking artists, “If you could create anything you wanted—to the best of your abilities and the height of your imagination— what would it be, and what do you need to create it?” For Merkuratsuk, the answer was immediately clear. The sole project outlined by the artist details the materials needed to make the mittens: red sealskin, red leather—enough for two palms—liner, red sinew, glover needles and red fox fur trim.
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An accomplished seamstress, Merkuratsuk learned to clean sealskin and to sew from her mother, who herself was often joined by Merkuratsuk’s father in this detailed and strenuous work. Over time, he began making his own mitts and kamiik, working from patterns held and used by Merkuratsuk’s mother. When the artist’s ailing mother was no longer able to sew, Merkuratsuk’s father collected all of her patterns for safekeeping. Merkuratsuk made these mittens for herself, using a pattern made and cherished by her parents. In their travels across the country as part of SakKijâjuk, these mittens are a poignant and tender reminder of the power of memory, family and the love and knowledge that is shared through things made and worn. And they are, in effect, a family portrait—a father’s pattern, a mother’s teaching and a daughter’s skill. –Heather Igloliorte
Skin Stories
Surface Tensions: Maureen Gruben, Sonya Kelliher-Combs and Joar Nango — by Britt Gallpen
SURFACE
TENSIONS
Tracing the work of three artists spanning the Global North, this feature examines the cultural power and inherent politics of the organic materials—skin, bone, fur—that are foregrounded within their respective practices.
Inuvialuk artist Maureen Gruben exploded onto the Canadian art scene in June 2017 with her piece Stitching My Landscape (2017), an arresting performance work that involved stitching ice fishing holes around Ibyuq Pingo with red cloth. Curated by Tania Wilard, it became the striking visual for LandMarks2017, a monumental, multisite project undertaken by a curatorial team from across the country and realized in and around Canada’s national parks and historic sites. Shortly after, Gruben’s work graced the cover of C Magazine’s Winter 2018 issue, kicking off what is sure to be a notable year for the artist. Despite this seemingly rapid rise, however, Gruben has been steadily creating a body of work that is characterized by its methodical and undeniably intimate materiality. Born and raised in Tuktoyaktuk, Inuvialuit Settlement Region, NT, and now based in Victoria, BC, Gruben spent much of her childhood sewing with her mother, a seamstress, and trapping with her father. These influences appear to be self-evident in Gruben’s works, which generously feature sealskin, polar bear fur and moose hide. In many of her works, however, these organic materials are joined by wax, reflective tape, steel grommets and latex, resulting in objects that leap beyond their discrete visual vocabularies into a language uniquely their own. When I reached her in her studio this past April, Gruben had just finished a new piece marrying vintage military service medals with sealskin, “in honour of our hunters,” she explained.1 Over the past several years, the artist has been making and exhibiting works that foreground hide, fur and bone and that display “an innate material intelligence,” says curator and writer Kyra Kordoski, who works closely with Gruben. “There is a foundational process of thinking through the materials themselves,” she adds.2 An early work in this vein is This is Not a Hudson’s Bay Blanket (2015), consisting of a patchwork, moose hide blanket, carefully folded and displayed atop an aluminium plinth. Featuring layered patterning, where curving forms are butted up against tight, linear cuts, this composite work was constructed with non-uniform pieces of hide that have been stitched to one another. The material was sourced from the scraps of other textiles—mitts, moccasins, jackets, etc.—
Maureen Gruben (b. 1963 Tuktoyaktuk) — PREVIOUS SPREAD
Untitled (Delta Trim) (detail) 2018 Bubble wrap, reflective tape, Velcro, zip ties and moose hide 48.3 × 6.6 m PHOTO KYRA KORDOSKI
BELOW
Consumed (detail) 2017 Beluga intestine, thread and found objects Dimensions variable PHOTO KYRA KORDOSKI
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Maureen Gruben — Seal In Our Blood 2018 Sealskin, red velvet and thread 12.8 m × 2.5 cm (diameter) PHOTO KYRA KORDOSKI
This is Not a Hudson’s Bay Blanket signals to this long and complex history and is particularly poignant when read in relation to the MacFarlane Collection, considered to be one of the largest and best-preserved records of Inuvialuit life in the nineteenth century, including numerous items of skin clothing and sewing tools.3 The collection, now held at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, and comprised of some 300 Inuvialuit cultural objects, was amassed by a Fort Anderson Hudson’s Bay trading post manager in the 1860s. Only in the last decade were a group of Inuvialuit elders and youth, including seamstresses, permitted access to these objects that have been stored out of public view for more than 100 years. Gruben’s careful stitches and repurposing of materials is a poignant reminder of resiliency in the face of unimaginable loss. The artist has similarly utilized small, cut pieces of moose hide in her 2016 piece Breath. At five feet in height, the work is a humanscaled textile work, where each piece has been affixed to unprimed canvas with an individual stitch of white thread. Reminiscent of an Agnes Martin–style muted grid, here Gruben recasts the austere structures of minimalism in favour of an undulating, slightly askew composition. What begin as delineated columns at the top and bottom are interrupted with a tightening and a wiggle in the middle, suggestive of a wrinkle or a pucker. The tautness of the outside edges pull inward toward the centre of the piece, creating strong horizontal lines across the middle, reminiscent of a hug. As a result we are pulled into—swallowed by—the work. In Consumed (2017) beluga intestine was harvested, cleaned and dried, before being reimagined as a transparent vessel, or pocket, for the suspension of found objects: glowing red seed beads, a curled iPhone charger for an obsolete model and a yellow LifeStyles condom. Some of the objects hit heavy on first reading, such as a gold embossed My Little Bible with colour-bled edges, which hints at the collision of Indigenous knowledge and the legacy of Christian missionaries. Others, like the aforementioned beads, conjure something deeper, pushing and prodding for more consideration. Coloured glass beads, like those employed by Gruben, are widely used by Inuit seamstresses to create intricate designs on kamiik (boots), parkas and other textile pieces, but also signal the earliest moments of trade, exchange and globalization within the Canadian Arctic. The luminosity and delicacy of these small jewel-like spheres against the translucent and tangible surface of their envelope is piercing. “Beads,” writes Kordoski, “are creative tools. [They are] potential grains of storytelling— generative means of strengthening, adorning, celebrating and expanding the fabric of a culture.”4 Objects are similarly suspended, encased, venerated and preserved in the work of Anchorage, Alaska–based Sonya Kelliher-Combs. In Remnant (2016), however, the structure is inverted. First exhibited at SITElines.2016 much wider than a line, the SITE Santa Fe Biennial, Kelliher-Combs’ Remnant takes the form of small, wooden boxes, wrapped in tinted, semi-opaque acrylic polymer “skins.” Each frame plays host to a small piece of vibrant organic matter, pulled largely from the artist’s personal collection—a caribou antler, a length of
Gruben has been steadily creating a body of work that is characterized by its methodical and undeniably intimate materiality. —
made by elders, specifically from the Sahtu Region and Fort Simpson, NT, “some of whom are very distinguished sewers, who tanned the hide themselves,” Gruben elaborates. Throughout, small slits, holes, and colour and textural variation are visible and stand in stark contrast to the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) blanket’s ubiquitous straight lines in red, yellow, green and navy. “I put [the scraps] together the way they came to me,” Gruben explains. The sensory aspect of the piece, the distinctly warm and animal smell, is also central to one’s experience of it. “The smell of moose hide brings you home, to the land, as opposed to a blanket which spreads disease,” says the artist. “I wanted this blanket to carry healing.” Although the history of the HBC in Gruben’s home community of Tuktoyaktuk is comparatively recent (a trading post was established in the 1930s), its presence in Inuvialuit territory and the surrounding regions dates back to the mid-nineteenth century.
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arrangements, often alongside new items such as cardboard boxes affixed with the Silver Hand seal, noting “Authentic Alaska Native Art,” and identification cards. One work titled Goodbye (2007) brought together 38 pairs of gloves on a wide, low-standing, white plinth. The arrangement—a memorial—represents the number of Alaska Natives who died by suicide, starting in 2005 and continuing up to the exhibition’s opening. “When I did Con-Census,” explains the artist, “a big part of that was to bring out things that people don’t talk about. . . . My work is not just about creating this physical thing, it’s also about what I think is missing from this world today, which is the time we spend with each other, with our families. Whether it’s learning to do something—hunting or fishing or cooking—or spending time together as a family, it’s something we need to have in our lives for enrichment, this interaction with each other. A lot of my work is about that time spent, [which is] something you can’t get back—learning from your grandma or your mom. It’s not necessarily about the object that you made afterwards, although that is the culmination of this time, it’s more about the time that you spent with somebody and what happened during that time.” Increasingly, Kelliher-Combs’ time is spent thinking, making and discussing with others. In recent years, a major aspect of her work has been the creation of spaces of exchange and sites of dialogue with other Indigenous artists, scholars, curators and collaborators in the form of Curated Conversations. The ongoing series, begun in 2015 in collaboration with the Anchorage Museum as part of their Polar Lab series, has featured notable participants from across North America and the Global North, including Inuit photographer Barry Pottle, Greenlandic performance artist Jessie Kleemann, curator Candice Hopkins and iconic performance artist James Luna (1950–2018). Topics have included borders and boundaries, northern food security, self-determination, sovereignty and place names, and exhibiting and commodifying culture. The result, explains Kelliher-Combs, is far-reaching and ongoing “connections across geographic boundaries and disciplines.”
seal intestine, the delicate, feathered wing of a bird. As art historian David Winfield Norman notes, behind the “sheen of the synthetic skin, [the objects] take on a dreamlike quality and begin to appear somehow, mysteriously, alive.”5 They, like much of Kelliher-Combs’ work, also reveal and obscure narrative—they remember. Secrets and stories, memory, exchange and history are foundational to the artist’s practice and are transmitted by way of her choice of embodied materials, which regularly include hair and animal skins, fur, guts and intestines. Often, the narrative aspects of Kelliher-Combs’ work reveal or release stories of deeply rooted trauma. One such series, Idiot Strings, which includes both two- and three-dimensional works, was created largely between 2001 and 2005 and is a testament to the immense, intergenerational impact of suicide in small northern communities. Notably, the first four works in the series were created in memory of members of Kelliher-Combs’ own family who died by suicide. The title of the series evokes a resistance to forgetting: “idiot strings,” as they are colloquially known, are the strings tied to children’s mittens to prevent them from losing them. This tender concept is perhaps most identifiable in the larger three-dimensional installations from the series where the mitten forms are evoked with dangling pouches, fashioned from walrus stomach, sheep or reindeer rawhide or acrylic polymer, and tethered to one another with strands of cotton rope. “The larger installations,” Kelliher-Combs explains, “relate to generations of Alaska Natives who have taken their own lives because of loss of identity, alcoholism or abuse. [The works are] also about not forgetting those things, acknowledging them and staying connected to who we are, but at the same time letting go of those painful things to be able to heal from them, move on and transform them.” This impulse to name the wound and to let it heal runs deep in Kelliher-Combs’ practice and often includes the voices of others. For a 2007 project at the Anchorage Art Museum, Con-Census, the artist curated an exhibition of objects—hand-sewn mittens and skin boots—pulled from the museum’s vaults and paired in thoughtful
Sonya Kelliher-Combs (b. 1969 Anchorage) — LEFT
RIGHT
Gold Idiot Strings (detail) 2012–13 Wool, rawhide, wire, nylon thread and wax 304.8 × 304.8 cm
Remnant (Seal Intestine) 2016 Mixed media and organic and synthetic materials 40.6 × 40.6 cm
COURTESY THE ARTIST PHOTO CHRIS AREND
COURTESY THE ARTIST PHOTO CHRIS AREND
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I started with the idea of bringing something, or some things, that are very meaningful and very representative of my home, when I started the journey. —
tradition; they are called bealljek, and they are used as the primary structure for both our tents and our turf houses.” After identifying 12 similarly sized trees, Nango felled and dried them for several months, before loading them into his red 1996 Mercedes Sprinter. Outfitted with a large freezer, filled with two reindeer he had slaughtered— half of the meat smoked, the other dried by the artist’s aunt—Nango’s van was also packed with 38 reindeer skins collected en route to Athens. Nango’s resulting work, European Everything (2017), is simultaneously an installation, a stage, a performance and a site (or rather sites) of encounter and collaboration. Crucially, it is also the action-based journey made by Nango, with all of his tools and materials, from Tromsø to Athens to Kassel and back again. “I started with the idea of bringing something, or some things, that are very meaningful and very representative of my home, when I started the journey. I guess those are the materials I thought about as representative—the birch, the meat and the skins. Everything else I left open to chance and to the production phase in Athens.” As Nango drove south to Athens, he continued to amass materials from across the continent. “I wanted to investigate this slice of Europe in a way,” he says. “I wanted to check out, what is Europe as a piece of land? What is Europe without its borders? What is Europe as you move through it, and what can it be for me in the way that I think about the world, space and identities?” Nango’s production phase took place in a local scrapyard, becoming his temporary studio for the three months leading up to documenta’s April 2017 opening. European Everything was installed in the outdoor courtyard of the Athens Conservatoire, becoming both an installation as well as a collaborative venue, including performances by Greenlandic DJ Uyarakq and rapper Tarrak, yoiker Wimme Saari and others. The main structure, built from Nango’s birch trees, was constructed by the artist alongside local refugees, while the canvas for its surrounding was culled from the discarded awnings of local businesses. The interior was outfitted with a soft, fur-covered base. Traditionally, the floors of Sámi tents are made with a thick layer of tender, spring birch branches atop which reindeer skins are placed. The result is a “very luxurious” mattress-like construction, made fragrant by the birch trees’ new leaves, explains Nango. For Athens, olive branches were substituted to create a cushion, while the covering became a mix of reindeer and sealskins, the latter procured by the artist on a trip to Greenland. The stage, a monumental letter E, was constructed from an old sign for Eskimo, the brand name for home appliances
This collaborative, multivocal approach is also reflected in the work of Sámi artist Joar Nango, who in 2017 created an ambitious and open-ended project for the dual-site documenta 14 (Athens, Greece, and Kassel, Germany), arguably the world’s largest and most prestigious contemporary art event. In October of 2016, Nango travelled north from his home in Tromsø, Norway, to a remote valley near where his uncle and grandfather, both reindeer herders, had kept their summer pasturing grounds. The area is a significant site of harvest for the natural materials traditionally used by Sámi herders to build temporary structures and holds a particular interest for Nango, a trained architect. “Because it is such a steep, north-facing slope, all the birch trees that grow there have this special frame, this bent shape,” explains the artist. “Those bent trees are a very valuable building material in Sámi
Joar Nango (b. 1979 Alta) — Folding Forced Utopias, for you (detail) 2016 Lightbox COURTESY GALLERY 44
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Joar Nango — European Everything 2017 Neon, metal, wood, fur, sound installation and site-specific performance for documenta 14 COURTESY THE ARTIST
produced by Viometal Eskimo, a now defunct Greek company. is placed cut pieces of reindeer leg skin, used in the making of The original neon tubing from the sign was also repurposed for the nuvttohat, the iconic, curled-toe, fur boots heavily associated with installation, made new in glowing blue and suspended alongside Sámi culture. Although the repurposed kamik templates are perhaps speakers wrapped in sealskin. The assemblage speaks to the resourceunlikely markers of culture on first pass, they carry within them fulness and improvisation of an Indigenous built environment, the knowledge of generations of seamstresses in the making of particularly one that exists “where resources are scarce and the garments and the will and ingenuity of passing that information climate unpredictable, harsh and unmerciful.” 6 forward, in whatever form or material might be available. “I use what’s available to me.” That is what Maureen Gruben tells For the opening in Kassel, Nango was asked by the documenta 14 me halfway through our call when I ask about her choice of materials. curatorial team to create a lectern for the official press conference. It is a seemingly simple statement with profound roots and real In response, Nango built a sculptural composite that included Serbian impacts. For Gruben, as well as for Kelliher-Combs and Nango, what animal tails, chairs found on the street in Athens, a gravestone from is available are materials that are deeply personal and intrinsically Sweden, neon from the Athens installation, marble from Serbia political, circulating far beyond the discrete control of the artists and copper from Romania—“all these different European materials themselves. This is clear from the strong, affective responses I had gathered, I manufactured into this strange little lectern.” they elicit, including “morality” legislation that bans or restricts Absent from the final iteration was a sealskin pelt, removed at the the import of certain organic materials, including animal bone request of the curatorial team, who worried its presence would and skin, across international boundaries, and from the explosive become a catalyst for criticism and detract from the main focus of and much-publicized rhetoric of anti-sealing groups.7 For Gruben, the presentation. In its place, Nango included a silk, Picasso-inspired jacket from Berlin. When asked about the switch, Nango explains growing anger towards the anti-sealing movement and its disregard that after his initial anger at the request subsided, what became most for the impact on Indigenous life and culture hit its breaking point interesting was his own position as a Sámi artist. “I think if it had in the creation of her 2018 piece FUK, a massive sculpture of a penis been a reindeer skin, I would have felt a stronger connection to it. emblazoned with “#sealfie.” “Seal is so important to us,” explains Maybe I would have felt differently if I were Inuit, maybe I wouldn’t Gruben. “And the time has come to just say ‘Fuck you.’” have compromised.” What the incident ultimately revealed, is the capacity for a quotidian Indigenous material, one that is entwined with Inuit survival, livelihood and culture, to act as a major global NOTES disruptor. Likewise, Nango’s reindeer skins proved difficult for his Athens audience to ignore—six were stolen from the installation 1 All quotes from Maureen Gruben, Sonya Kelliher-Combs and Joar Nango, unless otherwise noted, are taken from telephone conversations with the author during the exhibition’s run. In 2016 Nango’s ongoing research on circumpolar architecture 2 on April 9 and 10, 2018. Conversation with the author on April 13, 2018. brought him to Iqaluit and Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, where he 3 CBC News, “Inuvialuit Elders, Youth to View Rare Artifacts at Smithsonian,” looked at the legacy of government-built dwellings in the Canadian CBC News Online, May 19, 2009, accessed April 2017, http://www.cbc.ca/ Arctic. The resulting installation, Folding Forced Utopias, for you, was news/canada/north/inuvialuit-elders-youth-to-view-rare-artifacts-atsmithsonian-1.826608. exhibited at Gallery 44 in Toronto, ON, and featured, among other 4 Kyra Kordoski, “Shift; Rise: Maureen Gruben’s UNGALAQ,” in UNGALAQ (When components, a cut sealskin, screen printed with “The government is Stakes Come Loose) (Vancouver: grunt gallery, 2017), unpaginated. the owner of the house. . . . Eskimos rent houses from the government.” 5 David Winfield Norman, “Sonya Kelliher-Combs: Iñupiaq-Athabascan The line is pulled from the manual Living in New Houses (1970), published Interdisciplinary Artist,” First American Art Magazine, no. 14 (Spring 2017): 58. 6 Candice Hopkins, “Joar Nango,” online excerpt from documenta 14: Daybook, by the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development accessed April 2017, http://www.documenta14.de/en/artists/1405/joar-nango. (now Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada), a photocopy 7 Sue Bailey, “Canada Loses WTO Appeal as Europe’s Seal Products Ban Upheld,” of which was placed atop a reindeer skin nearby. The installation also The Star, May 22, 2014, accessed March 2017, https://www.thestar.com/news/ includes an oversized light box, depicting a collection of cardboard, canada/2014/05/22/canada_loses_wto_appeal_as_europes_seal_products_ kamik-pattern pieces, cut from cereal and cracker boxes atop which ban_upheld.html.
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SOFT SHAPES
Sex and Desire in Contemporary Inuit Graphic Art and Film — by Daniella Sanader
& HARD MATTRESSES
Annie Pootoogook (1969–2016 Kinngait) —
In Alethea Arnaquq-Baril’s Inuktut-language film Aviliaq: Entwined (2014), Viivi and Ulluriaq are two women fighting to sustain their relationship as their community pressures them into marrying men. As Ulluriaq watches mournfully, Viivi marries their childhood friend Pitsiulaaq in a small ceremony led by a minister and flanked by RCMP officers. Ulluriaq faces a similar fate: her husband-to-be, Johnny, lives in town and has a good job, and they are to be married in two short days at the behest of her mother. Desperate not to lose her lover, Ulluriaq visits Viivi’s tent, and the two reconnect (that is, they have sex) while Pitsiulaaq is out fishing. Wrapped in quilts and blankets— Viivi’s fingers stroking Ulluriaq’s long hair—the two develop a plan. It is apt that Arnaquq-Baril’s fifteen-minute narrative is set during the 1950s, a crucial moment in the colonization of the Arctic by Southerners—the physical and ideological policing of Inuit life under the auspices of white-centred “civility” and “morality.” As Arnaquq-Baril explains in the documentary Two Soft Things, Two Hard Things (2016) directed by Mark Kenneth Woods and Michael Yerxa, the 1950s and 60s was a “sudden and drastic transitional period . . . [and] with colonization, and with that transition, came a lot of shame.” As the presence of Christian missionaries grew in the North—and the first residential schools were established—Inuit forms of intimacy, partnership and sexuality were increasingly stifled and suppressed. The colonial agenda enforced Christian standards of monogamy, heteronormativity and the nuclear family in the Arctic. Aviliaq: Entwined is a reminder that Inuit had long followed their own self-determined alternatives.
PREVIOUS SPREAD
Making Love 2003–4 Coloured pencil and ink 51 × 66 cm ALL ARTWORKS REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION DORSET FINE ARTS UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED COURTESY FEHELEY FINE ARTS
Jutai Toonoo (1959–2015 Kinngait) — Night Time 2013 Coloured pencil 50.2 × 64.8 cm
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I remain drawn to Toonoo’s work for what crackles underneath his streaks of oil pastel—something that feels less tied to the specificity of this body and more about the energy, the possibility it generates in relation to mine. —
Lying in bed, Ulluriaq and Viivi are at a cultural turning point. They remember possibilities that run counter to a future of Christianenforced monogamy: they had seen times when a man had two wives or a woman had two husbands. “Like in the old days,” Viivi says. They convince Pitsiulaaq to take on Ulluriaq as a second wife, and in a few short moments of Arnaquq-Baril’s sparse-yet-sweet storytelling, the three commit to each other as mutual partners-lovers-friends. Packing up their tent in haste, however, they recognize that their partnership is a threat to the heteronormative family unit to which they are meant to conform. (As Ulluriaq says, “The white men would never allow it.”) Their attempt to sneak away is intercepted by the RCMP—tipped off by a jealous Johnny—and Ulluriaq, Viivi and Pitsiulaaq are separated. As Ulluriaq is forced into Johnny’s canoe, Aviliaq: Entwined ends with Ulluriaq screaming for Viivi, reaching out as her lover slips away. As Norman Vorano explains in his article “Inuit Men, Erotic Art: Certain Indecencies . . . That Need Not Be Mentioned,” the contradictory place of Inuit sex within the colonial-Christian imaginary—“offensive but titillating; censured but studied; ubiquitous but rendered invisible”—was reflected within Inuit artwork produced for (and mitigated by) white markets and audiences.1 Vorano recounts the story of an artmaking contest staged by anthropologist Nelson Graburn in Puvirnituq, Nunavik, QC, in 1967, where local carvers were offered prizes for producing “imaginative” works. It was an opportunity to produce work without a southerncentric art market in mind, to move beyond sellable scenes of hunters and Arctic animals, and Graburn noted how many of the submitted carvings blended sex and humour with Inuit storytelling. That being said, the Puvirnituq carvings were still embroiled within a complex network of settler evaluation, met with both fascination and repulsion by settler audiences in the North and South. Not only was the contest administered by a group of white judges, but also the carvings were quickly labelled “weirdo art” by many collectors and were barred from inclusion in the 1973 exhibition Sculpture/Inuit: Masterworks of the Canadian Arctic, a largescale, government-funded effort to produce the narrative of Inuit art for Canada and the world. Yet, as is often the case, white moral superiority is deeply connected to an often under-acknowledged curiosity and desire for difference: Vorano recounts the irony that many of the erotic carvings were purchased by white locals in Puvirnituq before the contest was even complete. This mid-century economy for enacting settler desire within Inuit carving is perfectly encapsulated in another anecdote of Graburn’s: “Also in the late 1960s, I saw a very Playboy-style nude with larger detailed breasts in Inukjuak . . . and I asked the artist where he saw that. He said the white radiosonde operator had given him a girlie magazine and told him to ‘make one like that.’”2 Reading these accounts, I keep thinking of Ulluriaq and Viivi (and Pitsiulaaq) in their tent. In choosing to enter a non-monogamous marriage, the three rejected a settler-enforced structure for sex that thrives on deep anxieties about the complexity of human intimacy. (A culture of both monogamous marriage and Playboy magazine.) Their alternative not only gestures to the long histories of plural marriage common among nomadic, pre-colonized Inuit families,
Jutai Toonoo — ABOVE
ᐋᖅᑳᒃ (Aaqkaak) 2012 Coloured pencil 65 × 50 cm Inscribed: Demonstration of being loved
BELOW
Relaxing 2013 Coloured pencil and oil pastel 115.6 × 127 cm
© DORSET FINE ARTS
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Annie Pootoogook — LEFT
Composition (Man Approaching Woman) 2001 Ink 51 × 66 cm OPPOSITE
Woman at Her Mirror (Playboy Pose) 2003 Coloured pencil and ink 66 × 51 cm
a vagina, an anus, the fleshy curves of a woman’s thighs. The fact that ᐋᖅᑳᒃ (Aaqkaak) tiptoes so closely to the edge of abstraction creates ample room for our own desires to come rushing in. (For weeks, I thought I was looking at two breasts pressing together— nipple to nipple—perhaps implicating my own realm of association and intimacy, writing as a queer settler woman.) That being said, it is rare to see a full woman’s body in one of Toonoo’s drawings. Women’s flesh is bisected and abstracted, an amorphous landscape of sensation as opposed to a figure with agency, a person with desires of her own. Drawings like Relaxing (2013) come close, but the image cuts off at her upturned chin, the curve of her lips. Toonoo is certainly not the first male artist to render female flesh as anonymous and fractured, nor will he be the last. Regardless, I remain drawn to Toonoo’s work for what crackles underneath his streaks of oil pastel—something that feels less tied to the specificity of this body and more about the energy, the possibility it generates in relation to mine. If sex is truly a messy convergence of opposing sensations, Toonoo is capturing them all at once: the sight of bare skin and the heat that it emanates, the intensity of closeness and the lingering distance between bodies, the desire to reach out and the need to be touched. Toonoo’s female bodies are fractured and made amorphous, but the sexiness of Annie Pootoogook’s drawings emerges, for me, from their unapologetic wholeness. Drawings like Composition (Man Approaching Woman) (2001) and Erotic Scene (Four Figures) (2001) show bodies having—enjoying—sex in overwhelming clarity, from a head tilting back in pleasure to sock-clad toes raised in the air. Much has been said about Pootoogook’s celebrated and deeply influential approach to representing life in the Arctic—an Arctic rendered in the ordinary, infused with both the lasting, everyday violences of colonialism and the quiet moments of love, family, boredom and pleasure known amongst Inuit. Her erotic drawings are no different: these scenes do not occur in Toonoo’s ambiguous, mercurial settings that swirl with nude flesh, but feature hard mattresses and scratchy, blue carpets on living room floors. Her drawings of sex are also drawings of houseplants and electrical outlets, a TV and stereo set in the corner, a woman who hasn’t bothered to remove her socks. They show desire in its everyday,
it also creates space for queer expressions of desire to flourish beyond shame or colonial moralizing. As Arnaquq-Baril speculates in Two Soft Things, Two Hard Things, perhaps same-sex desire had long existed within Inuit plural marriages, as Inuit families negotiated both the practical realities of nomadic survival and their personal forms of intimacy in nuanced ways. As we know, that life wasn’t ultimately available to Ulluriaq, Viivi and Pitsiulaaq. Yet watching them discuss its possibility opens up different avenues for imagining what sexuality can mean—what sexuality has always meant—in the North. Through equally bold yet vastly different approaches to drawing, Jutai Toonoo (1959–2015), Annie Pootoogook (1969–2016) and Shuvinai Ashoona, RCA each use nude and naked figures to explore these infinite possibilities of desire in Inuit art. In his oil pastel and coloured pencil drawings, Toonoo was known for intimate and psychologically-attuned portraits of his subjects. Yet in a series of nude figure drawings produced by the Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU-born artist between 2011 and 2013, the possibilities of desire are felt rather than shown. In Night Time (2013) warm and cool shapes undulate across a dark sheet of paper. It’s not immediately clear what we are seeing: a woman’s outstretched thighs and vulva coalesce into view, yet just as quickly she re-dissolves into a swirling mass of colour and negative space. She’s amorphous—all warmth and possibility in an ice-blue environment—yet she remains just out of reach, capable of disappearing entirely. It’s easy to be taken in by Toonoo’s evocative drawings of flesh. Perhaps they serve as a reminder of how desire unfixes us all: breaking down our structured identities into bodies that want, need and feel. Film critic Laura U. Marks describes the erotic as an oscillation between what’s far and near, an ongoing reciprocity between touching and being touched: “Life is served by the ability to come close, pull away, come close again. What is erotic is being able to become an object with and for the world, and to return to being a subject in the world.”3 Toonoo’s drawings play with this collapsing space between subject and object. In ᐋᖅᑳᒃ (Aaqkaak) (2012) two soft forms streaked with lines of colour gently press together; a dark crease keeps them separate. I stared at this drawing for a long time, recognizing its deeply felt sensuality before I could register what I was seeing:
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Pootoogook’s drawings of sex are also drawings of houseplants and electrical outlets, a TV and stereo set in the corner, a woman who hasn’t bothered to remove her socks. They show desire in its everyday, mundane complexities. —
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In Ashoona’s drawings, pregnant figures become dense, entangled meeting places for the ecstatic and the grotesque, for myth and landscape, for tradition and fantasy, for soft skin and total, monstrous strangeness. —
stances of these women: we see both of them in profile, they are not facing us, yet they don’t fully turn away either. One is presumably gazing at her own reflection—taking pleasure in her own dark hair and the curves of her breasts—and the other, with closed eyes and a slight arch in her back, is also focused wholly on herself. As viewers, it doesn’t feel as if we are peeking in on something illicit or private, yet nor do these women need our gazes for their fulfillment. Their pleasures are found in themselves: turning a cold shoulder to dynamics of artist and subject, settler economies of entitlement and systems that would otherwise police their desire. Moving from sexuality in no place to a familiar place, to someplace entirely different, nude drawings by Shuvinai Ashoona stage Inuit desire on a completely new plane of existence. Drawings like Happy Mother (2013) and Peridot Baby (2016) show two naked pregnant figures in various states of mythic transformation: a blonde woman clutches between her thighs the head of a baby crowned in tiny worlds and a greenish being with one long breast and one small nipple reaches towards us with a similar blue-and-green world in their palm. These “female” bodies have human features, yet they also stretch into something hybrid and unique. In Happy Mother, the figure’s left hand grows long and claw-like, while a giant bird clutches her torso from behind, perhaps guiding her through this otherworldly birthing process. The figure in Peridot Baby seems less tied to a cis-gendered binary of male-female, with cracked fingernails, swollen genitals and a small, brown man sliding into their body through a blue-green umbilical cord. Peridot Baby seems a far cry from Pootoogook’s living rooms and Toonoo’s soft curves. Yet sitting with these three vastly different approaches to the nude form, I can recognize that each artist’s work is equally a construction and a fantasy, an image of what might be possible within an expanded Inuit framework for sexuality.
mundane complexities; they remind me that lust rarely occurs in a vacuum. Sex is surely an electricity felt against your partner’s flesh, but isn’t it also a hard floor pressing against your back, a breeze wafting in from the window, the (now cold) cup of tea you share when you’re done? Two other drawings stand out to me amid Pootoogook’s erotic work. Woman Masturbating and Woman at Her Mirror (Playboy Pose) (both 2003) each depict lone female bodies—a subject matter with long and loaded histories in all forms of artmaking, but specifically in relation to the depiction of Indigenous bodies—yet neither is positioned as the passive muse in an artist’s studio. Clad in nothing but red heels, one woman sits at her vanity, tying back her hair, an image of the Playboy bunny on her wall. The other is rendered in black and white save for her red-painted toenails and lips, blue eyeshadow on closed lids and the soft pink of a vibrator as she masturbates near a window with drawn curtains. I am drawn to the
Shuvinai Ashoona (b. 1961 Kinngait) — LEFT
Happy Mother 2013 Coloured pencil and ink 123.2 × 127 cm
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Shuvinai Ashoona — BELOW
RIGHT
Peridot Baby 2016 Coloured pencil and ink 121.9 × 78.1 cm
Birthing Scene 2013 Coloured pencil and ink 127 × 71.1 cm COURTESY MONTREAL MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS PHOTO CHRISTINE GUEST
It may also seem incongruous to end an essay on sex with images of pregnancy—in queer conversations, I am certainly aware of a heteronormative over-association between sexuality and reproduction—yet Ashoona’s mothers are anything but normative. Wrapped in the wings of her bird-lover-midwife, she is grinning and her eyes are wide. She takes sheer pleasure in this extraordinary process, toes curled and arms distorted, as she braces for these new worlds her body is unfurling. In Ashoona’s drawings, pregnant figures become dense, entangled meeting places for the ecstatic and the grotesque, for myth and landscape, for tradition and fantasy, for soft skin and total, monstrous strangeness. In short, they are reminders that our flesh contains pure, transformative possibility— and that’s undeniably sexy. I’ve been wondering what could have been possible for Ulluriaq and Viivi within these vastly different landscapes for Inuit sexuality. Yet perhaps that’s not the right approach. Sitting on the edge of their bed with Pitsiulaaq, the three already knew what they needed, what new forms of intimacy they could seek within each other.
Skin
It was the colonial-Christian structure surrounding them that wished to reorient their pleasures into finite, “civilized” pathways. Recent drawings by Jutai Toonoo, Annie Pootoogook and Shuvinai Ashoona also depict nude bodies and sexual pleasure from the complex and nuanced positions of Inuit artists living under contemporary Canadian settler colonialism. In their work, naked flesh stretches forward and backward across Inuit history and culture, it embodies mundane intimacies and fantastical alternatives. It reminds us that there is resilience in seeking pleasure where you need it. NOTES
Norman Vorano, “Inuit Men, Erotic Art: Certain Indecencies . . . That Need Not Be Mentioned,” Inuit Art Quarterly 23, no. 3 (Fall 2008): 22. 2 Nelson Graburn, “Clothing in Inuit Art,” in Arctic Clothing of North America-Alaska, Canada, Greenland, eds. J.C.H. King, Birgit Pauksztat and Robert Storrie (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005), 138. 3 Laura U. Marks, Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), xvi. 1
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I Healing Ink: An Interview with Cora DeVos
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Mamisaut pauq: Uqalaktitaujuq Cora DeVos
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Though the Inuit Tattoo Revitalization Project has only been active for just over two years, their accomplishments are impressive: dozens of women have been tattooed, a book has been published and perhaps most importantly an almost lost art form has been resurrected. Cora DeVos has been there to capture the process from its earliest stages. DeVos, a professional photographer based in Vermilion, AB, who goes by Little Inuk Photography, was asked by project founder Angela Hovak Johnston to document this important and unique process. DeVos has travelled the Canadian Arctic with Johnston to capture the important stories told along the way. In the following interview, conducted by Inuit Art Quarterly Assistant Editor John Geoghegan, DeVos shares insights into the development of the project and what the resurgence of this art form has meant, both for her and for the women who have been tattooed.
Tamauna Inuit Kakkilaarusia Utiqtitauniga Piliragiujuq pilirijauvalialisaaqtuq taimannanit magruuk ukiuk, kajusittiaqsimajuq takuminaqtut: amisut aqnait kakijausimajut, uqalimaagaq saqitausimajuq ammau pimmariuniqpaaq asiukasaksimajumut sanaguarusiq maana uumaqtitaukanniqpuq. Cora DeVos taikaniipuq pivalianiganit. DeVos, qaijimajuqjuaq ajiliuriji nunaqaqtuq Vermilion, AB, unalu atuqaqtuq Mikijuq Inuk Ajiliuriji, apirijaulauqtuq taapsuma kakkijut pigiaqtisimajanga Angela Hovak Johnston titiraqtauluni tamanna pimmariujuq ammalu ajiungituq pivaliajuq. DeVos igirasimajuq Canataup Ukiuqtaqtuanut piqatigilugu Johnston nipiliuqniaqmata pimmariujut unikaat namugaqpalialutik. Ukua takvani titiraqsimajut apiqsuqtaujuq, pilirijausimajuq taapkunangat Inuit Art Quarterly ikajuqtingata titiraqtimut John Geoghegan, DeVos takutitisimajuq pivaliatitauniganit piliriagujuq ammalu tupaaqtauniganik uumaqtitaukaniqtuq taimunnailiurusiq sanaguarusigilugu, tamainut imminut ammalu taapsumunga aqnamut kakijaujumut.
JOHN GEOGHEGAN: Can you tell me about yourself and how you became involved with the Inuit Tattoo Revitalization Project? CORA DEVOS: [Angela] Hovak Johnston and I have been best friends since we were in high school together in Cambridge Bay [Iqaluktuuttiaq, NU]. I didn’t know that tattooing was part of our culture until Hovak came to me and told me that she was thinking of getting them on her cheeks. I was pretty excited to see what
PREVIOUS SPREAD
PREVIOUS SPREAD
Cora DeVos (b. 1978 Iqaluktuuttiaq/ Vermilion) — Trisha Ogina 2017 Digital photograph
Cora DeVos (Inuuniku. 1978 Iqaluktuuttiaq/ Vermilion) — Trisha Ogina 2017 Qarisaijakkut ajiliuqsimajuq
ALL PHOTOS © CORA DEVOS, LITTLE INUK PHOTOGRAPHY
TAMAQMIK AJINGUAT © CORA DEVOS, LITTLE INUK PHOTOGRAPHY
Inuit Art Quarterly
JOHN GEOGHEGAN: Uqautinga ikvit miksaanik ammalu qanuq ilauliqniqnut Inuit Kakkilaarusia Utiqtitauniga Piliriagujuq? CORA DEVOS: [Angela] Hovak Johnston ovangalu piqanariiktuguk taimanganit iliniaq&uta Iqaluktuuttiaq, NU. Qaujimalaungitunga tamanna kakiniq ilagijaugiajsanga piusituqattinut kisiani Hovak qaigami ammalu uqautiluniga kakijaujumalumi uluaqmigut. Quviasikautigilauqtunga takujumalunga qanuq saqisimaniaq magaata, ammalu mikijumik qaujimasukkama piugiluamut ovangatauq pitaarumalauqtunga. Piruqsalunga, Hovak ammalu ovanga iksivaluta iklurusiqmi ammalu ovatingnik ajiuliuqatautivaktuguk. Una sivuliqpaarilauqtara ajiliuq&ugu, ammalu taapna ajiliuq&ugu quviagijara. Taapna sinaktuani uumaqtilauqtanga Inuit Kakkilaarusia Utiqtitauniga Piliragiujuq, ovannut uqalulauqsimajuq. Inuktik ilautitijumalauqimajuq piliriarijaminut ammalu taikani ilauliqpunga.
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Taikaniitiluta, anaanaga nilirajuktuulauqmat uqarajuktuuluni piuksarani tamatuminga ammalu Inuit taimanailiuriaqangitut. Taimalu oinasuarusiq taikanii&uta, ammalu tusarami ammalu takuluni aktuiniganik nunaliknik, taimaak isumaguniilauqtuq. —
OPPOSITE
ABOVE
Mary Taletok’s Hands 2016 Digital photograph
Hovak Johnston, Yellowknife 2014 Digital photograph
JG: Naliak nunalik pulaalauqpisiuk tamatummunga Inuit Kakkilaarusia Utiqtitauniga Piliragiujuq ajiliurilutit ilaginik ilaujunik? CD: Pulaalauqtavut Kugluktuk, NU, sivuliqpauluni. Isumajunga 12 aqnait atiliulauqtut, kisiani taapkua kakisijaujut 26-nik taikani.
IKLUGAGANI
Mary Taletok Agangit 2016 Qarisaijakkut ajiliuqsimajuq
QULANI
Hovak Johnston, Yellowknife 2014 Qarisaijakkut ajiliuqsimajuq
JG:
CD: Kamanaqtuq quvianaqtuq taikanii&uni ammalu titiraqpalialugit tamauna ajinguatigut. Maana takulugit ajinguat, takujunga qanuililuaqnigit aqnait takujiuraagamik tunniqmikmik, ammalu taqnigit suuqlu qaumaliqtut. Suuqlu tamanna asiuqajuq utiqtuq. Alianiagijara titirarunaq&ugu tamanna atuqtaujuq igiranigat. Pijariiqmatta kakijaulauq&utik, aaqiksuilauqtugut ajiliuqtauviksamik taapkua takutitijunaqniaqmatta nunaqjuamik iniqunaqsigamik tunniqaq&utik ammalu kakilauqsimalutik.
they were going to look like, and I did a little bit more research about them. I started falling in love with them myself. Growing up, Hovak and I used to sit in her room and take pictures of each other. She was the first subject I ever photographed, and she has always been my favourite. When she dreamt up the Inuit Tattoo Revitalization Project, she gave me a call. She wanted to have as many Inuit as possible as part of the project and that’s when I joined.
JG: Pitaqaqpaa unikaarunaqtaqnik ovvaluuniit tusaqtitijutigijunaqtaqnik? CD: Unikaat nakminiq immiknigaaqtut aqnait. Taimalu ovannik uqausirijunaqpunga. Pirusalauqtunga Qalunaani, taimalu ikpigusuk palauqtunga atatitaungininik piusituqannut. Akunigivalauqtara qauyijumalunga, kisiani pitaqalaungimat ovannut. Taikanni qaujuman gitiatunga Inuit kakilaarusiganik takvalu kakilaaqsimalirivunga. Ovannik ikajuqsimajuq sapirijaqaruniiq&unga ammalu upigilugu piusituqaqput. Naguaqni kigaqtutut paninnik, uinnik ammalu ovannik ammalu katansimajakka ammalu quvaqsimajakka inuusini. Aggak ka kakijutigit – Y- pisimajuq inuknik takuqataqtanik qautamaat, ammalu nikjagit kigaqtuqtut, ovannik, aqqutiga ammalu atuqtanik inuusinik. Iqaitijutigisuuka kinatuinnaq inuusinniitut pijutiqaramik. Anaanaga ammalu angajukka kakitlaaqsimaliqmijut maanna. Anaanaga iliniariaqtitauvalauqsimajuq tuksiaqviknut aniguisimajuq. Unali piuksalaungituugaluaq pigialisaa&uta, ammalu pijutigilauqtana nalunangituq iliniariaqtutaisimaluni ilititausimagami piusituqminik asiujiluni taimalu kangugililauqmagu. Maana piliriagujuq taikani Iqaluktuuttiaq, nunatuqanga anaanama. Taikaniitiluta, anaanaga nilirajuktuulauqmat uqarajuktuuluni piuksarani tamatuminga ammalu Inuit taimanailiuriaqangitut. Taimalu oinasuarusiq taikanii&uta, ammalu tusarami ammalu takuluni aktuiniganik nunaliknik, taimaak isumaguniilauqtuq. Tapsumani angiraqtunga unnukkut, ammalu taapna iksivajuq iksivautaalukmi qiajuq ammalu uqaq&uni, “Pijariaqaqtunga.” Taapnalu ovangalu iksivalunuk titiraujuaqtugut qanuiligajumik kakijaujumakmangaat. Saqitilautuq piujumarialukmik kikgaqtuijumik inuusiqminik ammalu maana atuqtanga upigilugu. Kamanaqtuq tautuk&uni taimana!
JG: What was the first community that you visited with the Inuit Tattoo Revitalization Project to photograph some of the participants? CD: We visited Kugluktuk, NU, for the first one. I think 12 women were signed up, but the team ended up tattooing 26 that time. JG:
What is it like being part of those sessions?
CD: It is amazing to be there and to document each woman’s journey and tell their stories through the photos. When I look back through the photos, I see the reactions that the women have when they see their new facial tattoos [tunniit], and I can see their souls light up. It is like a piece of them that has been missing is coming back together. It has been wonderful to be able to document their whole journey. After they are done getting their tattoos, we also set up a photo session, so that we can show the world how beautiful they look with their tattoos. JG:
Are there any stories that you are willing or able to share?
CD: The stories are very personal to every woman. So I can share my own. I was raised in the South, so I have always felt a disconnect to my culture. I always longed for it, but it wasn’t accessible to me.
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Qanuq ikpigusulauqpit ilagijaulutit taapkunani?
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I have gone from not knowing about Inuit tattoos at all to having them. They have helped me feel confident and proud of my culture. My wrist tattoos represent my daughters, my husband and myself and the ups and downs in life. My finger tattoos—the Y’s—represent the people I encounter on a daily basis, and the lines represent, for me, the journey and path of life. They are a constant reminder that everyone you meet is coming into your life for a reason. My mother and sisters also have tattoos now. My mom is a residential school survivor. She had been against the tattoos in the beginning actually, and I think that has to do with the residential school experience and being taught to be ashamed of our culture. The most recent project we did was in Cambridge Bay, which is where my mom is from. While we were there, my mom was very vocal that she didn’t like it and that people shouldn’t be doing it. As the week went on though, and she heard and saw the impact it was having on the community, she changed her mind. I got home one night, and she was sitting on the couch crying and said, “I need to get it done.” She and I sat down and sketched out what she wanted her tattoos to represent. We came up with a beautiful symbol that represents her life and she now wears them with pride. It was amazing to watch!
JG: Qujunamiik taapsumiga sangijualukmik unikaaravit. Naliak nunaliit upaksimavigit tamatummunga piliriarijaqnut? CD: Upaksimajakka tamaqmik pingasut nunaliit taapkualu piliriarijama upaksimajangit: Kugluktuk ammalu Ulukhaktok Inuvualukni, taikani 2017 ammalu Iqaluktuuttiaq, 2018-mi. JG: Qaujimavit qapsinik ajiliurisimakmagaaqpit taimanganik piliriagujuq pigialauqmat? CD: Thousands ammalu thousands-nik. Sanaqataluaqtugut 12 tiki&ugu 16 ikaranik nunalikniiliraagata qautamaat. Atuni nunaliit piliriarijatinit amisunik unikkaasaqalauqtut takulutik ajinguanik. JG:
CD: Hovak maana sanajuq tuksirautinik Eastern Arctic upakniaratigut. Titiraqtuq qiniq&uni kiinaujaksanik ammalu ikajurunaqtunik maapna. Utaqqivugut pijulaluta pilaakanilaaratigut kanaknavut qangatsiaq. JG: Uqausirijunnaqpiuk uqalimaagaq Reawakening Our Ancestors’ Lines (Tupaaqsiniq ilagilauqtapta kakitjusirilauqtagit)?
JG: Thank you for sharing that powerful story. What are some of the other communities that you have visited for the project?
CD: Ajiguat uqalimaagaqmiitut tamaqmikasattiaq ajiliuqsimajakka. Una anniritsiaqtara ovanut atajuq. Nunaqjuamut takujautinashuk&ugulu, piluaqtumik Inuit ukiuqtaqtuqmiut. Unattauq ajungititiniaqtuq Qalunaani nunaliknut takujunaqlutik piujunik ammalu upinaqtut piusituqaqput. Utiqtitara tamanna ovatinit aqsaaqtausimajuq piqutivut. Ovannut atuutiqaqtuq angijumik ilagijaunira ammalu titiraq&ugit taapkua aqnait atuqsimajangit maanamut. Ilagit unikaangit takiniqsaujut, ilagit nainiqsaujut kisianili tamaqmik nakminiq immigut tukiqaqtut. Isumajunga upigusuknik aqnanit aqnaujarasuutingannik tukisinaqsiti&ugit ajinguagitigut.
CD: I have been to all three of the communities that the project has visited: Kugluktuk and Ulukhaktok in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, in 2017, and Cambridge Bay in 2018. JG: Do you have any idea of how many photos you have taken over the course of the project thus far? CD: Thousands and thousands. We end up doing 12 to 16 hour days when we are in the communities. Each community project results in a lot of stories told through the photos. JG:
Aaqiksisimaviit sivuniksatinni pulaakanirumallutit nunaliknut?
JG: Apirijaulauqsimavit qanutuinnaq tamatumniga saqijaaqtitijunaqmagaapit ovvaluuniit saqijaaqtilugit ajiliatit tappsuminga piliriarijaqnik?
Are there any plans in the future to visit additional communities?
CD: Hovak is currently working on proposals to get us to the Eastern Arctic. She has letters out looking for funding and support right now. We are keeping our fingers crossed that we will visit the East soon. JG: Can you tell me about the publication Reawakening Our Ancestors’ Lines? CD: I took the majority of the photographs in the book. It means the world to me. Just being able to get it out to the world, especially to Inuit in the North. It will also allow people in the South to see the beauty and pride we have in our culture. We are reclaiming what was once taken from us. It means so much to be a part of it and to be able to document these women’s journeys. Some of their stories are longer, some shorter but they all have their own special meanings. I think the pride the women feel once they have their markings translates through the photos. JG: Have you been approached to do any exhibitions or displays of the photos you’ve taken for the project?
— We are reclaiming what was once taken from us. It means so much to be a part of it and to be able to document these women’s journeys. Inuit Art Quarterly
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OPPOSITE
The Artist’s Mother, Adeline Kavanna 2017 Digital photograph IKLUGAGANI
Una Sanaguaqtiup Ananaga, Adeline Kavanna 2017 Qarisaijakkut ajiliuqsimajuq RIGHT
Hovak Johnston Applying Stencil to Skye Corey, Cambridge Bay 2017 Digital photograph TALIQPIANA
Hovak Johnston aaqiksuqtanga Taikunga Skye Corey, Ikaluktuutiaqmi 2017 Qarisaijakkut ajiliuqsimajuq
CD: Locally, I have been asked to do an exhibition, but I would love to be able to travel with them and show the world the beauty that we have created. I would definitely be open to it.
CD: Nunattini. Apirijausimajunga saqijaaqtitijunaqmangaaqma, kisianili aulaqatigiqataqlugit pijumajunga takutilugu nunaqjuaq piujuuniganik saqitavut. Angirajaqtuksaujunga saqijaaqtitiquyauguma.
JG: I think you being there for the duration of the project, particularly while the women are being tattooed, lends a beautiful sense of familiarly with the subject when the formal portraits are taken.
JG: Isumajunga taikaniikuvit pilirijaunilimaangani tamapna, piluatumik aqnait kakijautilugit, tunisisimajutit piujumarialukmik ajigiiqatautitiniqmik pijitigijatsinik taapkua ajiliuqtaliraagata.
CD: Thank you. I document from the time that the tattoo artist is drawing out their markings, to when the stencil is put on, right to the very end. The photography becomes part of the whole story.
CD: Qujannamiik. Titiraqpaliasimajakka taapna kakisijuq sanavalianiganit kakisitilugu, ammalu pauq ilijauvaliajuq saqititijuq, pigiaqniganik isuanut. Ajiliakka ilagiliqataqtangit tamaqmik unikkaaganut.
JG: I imagine that many wonderful relationships and friendships have occurred along the way.
JG: Isumajunga taapku amisut ilagiitialiqataqtut ammalu piqanariiliq&utik tamauna.
CD: It is amazing. I can tell you a little story of when I was getting my finger tattoos. When I was getting them done, I was telling Hovak about some of the people the Y’s represent and how every time I travel to the North, I stumble on a newspaper clipping of one of my childhood best friends and I square dancing. Since the time that article was written, he has passed away by suicide. While I was getting my tattoos done, I was talking to Hovak about this, and there was another woman getting her tattoos done at the same time. It turned out that she heard me say his name a few times and she [turned to me and said], “that’s my brother.” I had no idea that she was related to him. That’s just one of the examples of how this project has brought people together that might not ever have crossed paths.
CD: Kamanaqtuq. Unikautijunnaqtagit naitummik kakijautilugit aggak ka. Pillirijauliq&utik, uqautilauqtara Hovak ilagit Y-nik pisimajunik ammalu qanuq pivaknigit ukiuqtaqtumut pularaliraagama, takulauq simagama tusagaksani titiraqsimajuq nutaraulunga piqanarilautara ammalu Inuktitut mumiq&uta ajinguaq. Taimanganit titirataulauqtilugu inuujuniiqsimaliq&uni iminiiq&uni. Taimalu kakijautilunga, uqalaqatigijara Hovak tamatummiga, ammalu tauvaniituqaq&uni kakijaujuqtauq aqnaq atautikuuqatigijara. Qaujinaqsilaurivuq tusaraminga atiqmik uqaqtunga atausiaqnaga ammalu [saanami ovannut ammalu uqaq&uni], “Taina aniga.” Qaujumalaungitunga taapsumunga ilagiyauyariaksaganik. Taimana takva uuktuuti qanuq piliriarijavut katititiqataqtuq inuknik taapkualu katigajalaungitunik.
JG: I think that the project also represents a lot of healing, and stories like this are really a testament to that.
JG: Isumajunga una piliriarijavut kigaqtuijuq ilaqaqtuq mamin sainiqmik, ammalu unikaat taimana saqitauqataqtut tamauna.
CD: There are women that go from uncontrollably crying to all of a sudden laughing with joy. They are letting out all of their emotions, letting go of hurt while they are getting their tattoos done. As soon as they get their markings, they have a whole different sense of themselves. It is amazing to be witness to.
Skin
CD: Aqnait atusuugukmata nuqarunaguaruniiq&utik qiajut am malu iqgiinaq iklaqsilutit quviasuk&utik. Taimana ikpigijatit ilumiknit anitipaktangit, aaniqsimajut aniti&ugit kakijaulutit suli. Pijariiragata kakisijut, nalunaqatangitut kinauniqmiknik aturunaqsijut. Alianaitummarialuk takuluni taimanaitumik.
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Healing Ink
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Summer 2018
Woman with Fish and Kakivak unidentified artist, Nunavik, ca. 1952
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LEGACY
The Early History and Enduring Narrative of Kinngait and Ulukhaktok’s Sealskin Stencils by Susan Gustavison Harry Egotak (1925–2009 Ulukhaktok) — Two Men Hunting a Bear 1962 Sealskin stencil 30 × 40 cm ALL COURTESY WINNIPEG ART GALLERY
The prevalence and popularity of Inuit prints remains, some 60 years on, a driving force in the Inuit art world, garnering considerable attention on both the primary and secondary markets. However, there are certain prints, namely those out of the Kinngait and Ulukhaktok studios in the late 1950s and early 1960s, that continue to captivate the attention of collectors, curators and scholars for their unlikely origins. At issue are the whys and hows of these early works, made—or so the story goes—from the most ubiquitous of Inuit materials: sealskin. Stencilling, used alone and in combination with relief printing, has been a vital element of Inuit printmaking for decades, in both Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, and Ulukhaktok (Holman), Inuvialuit Settlement Region, NT. Inuit Art Quarterly
In this technique, used for millennia, ink is applied through a cutout onto a second underlying surface. Used to mark crates, it is a very simple process. When used to apply colour or shading to a fine art print, 56
however, stencilling requires finesse. The ink must be properly applied once, before the process is repeated, up to 50 times, for an edition. The story begins in Kinngait.¹ In 1958, the second year of experimental printmaking, stencilling was adopted. The technique is ideal for adding touches of colour and shading to an image, possibly inspired by Inuit women’s skillful use of skins to decorate clothing, boots and bags, either by inset into the main fabric—which most closely resembles stencilling—or by appliqué. Use of the technique may also have come from James Houston’s printmaking training in Japan. The earliest stencil experiments involved sealskin, scraped clean—the fur carefully removed—and tanned. An image was then transferred to the skin and cut out, before being placed on the print paper. Ink was sparingly applied, first with shaving brushes, which proved too pliable even after Summer 2018
LEGACY
These early sealskin stencils were experimental but they never really worked.
cutting the bristles shorter, and later with proper stippling brushes. These early sealskin stencils, making use of local materials, were experimental, but they never really worked. The pelts were too stiff and tended to ripple— a disaster as ink would creep outside the image’s contour. Furthermore, the skins were a valuable commodity that Inuit could put to important, more practical, uses. The printmakers soon devised a method of heating a copper sheet on a stove, melting wax on the copper, and laying a piece of drawing paper on top while the wax hardened. This stiffened the paper, making it perfect for stencilling purposes. Each colour required a different stencil. In the 1959 Cape Dorset Annual Print Collection, of 40 prints, 19 were inscribed “stonecut and sealskin stencil” or “sealskin stencil.” This identifying practice continued in each annual print collection until 1962 when Terry Ryan, then General Manager of the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative, stopped it. In conversation with me, many decades later, the now late Ryan confirmed that no print using sealskin stencils was ever fully editioned. Yet for the four years between 1958 and 1961, there are 72 print editions inscribed “sealskin stencil” and three with “stonecut and sealskin stencil.” Why is unknown. Perhaps there was a desire to create the aura of links from traditional art and craft to modern printmaking. Ironically, it was the inclusion of “sealskin stencil” on a Cape Dorset print that caught the eye of Father Henri Tardy ² and the Holman Eskimo Co-operative.³ Seeking avenues to relieve the dire economic conditions of the community, when Father Tardy saw “sealskin stencil” on a print, he immediately thought the Inuit artists in Ulukhaktok could do that too. Sealskins were readily available, and he knew of the drawings made by Helen Kalvak, CM, RCA (1901–1984). In a 1962 experimentation led by Father Tardy and Victor Ekootak (1916—1965), one of the printmaking pioneers, began. Fur was shaved off the skin using Father Tardy’s only razor and an image was cut out. Skin
Harry Egotak — Stencil for print Two Men Hunting a Bear 1961 Sealskin 27 × 41.5 cm
Toothbrushes dipped in ink were used to apply colour. Five of these original sealskin stencils are still held in the co-op’s archives. By the end of 1964 an initial Holman collection of 30 prints by 5 artists was exhibited in New Brunswick. A total of 16 prints using sealskin stencils were editioned from the early 1960s collections. As in Kinngait, however, sealskin stencils were ultimately abandoned in favour of waximpregnated paper stencils and more recently stencils cut from Mylar. The short but remarkable history of sealskin stencils represents an inspired attempt by the artists and printmakers, in both Kinngait and Ulukhaktok, to adopt and adapt a local material to develop an art form that was new to them. At the same time, these industrious creators had the ingenuity and dedication to seek out more effective materials to create today’s legacy of beautiful, fine art prints. 57
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¹ I am indebted to the following authors’ research on sealskin stencils in Kinngait: Norman Vorano, Inuit Prints: Japanese Inspiration: Early Printmaking in the Canadian Arctic (Gatineau: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2011) and Christine Lalonde and Leslie Boyd, Uuturautiit: Cape Dorset Celebrates 50 Years of Printmaking (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2009). ² Father Henri Tardy ran the Roman Catholic mission in Ulukhaktok (then Holman) from 1949 to the early 1980s. He was one of nine founding members of the Holman Eskimo Co-operative in 1961. ³ The story of sealskin stencil use in Ulukhaktok has been compiled from the following sources: Visions of Rare Spirits: 20 Years of Holman Prints (Ottawa: Canadian Arctic Producers and Port Colborne Library, 1984); Father Henri Tardy, “The Beginnings of the Holman Eskimo Co-op,” Inuktitut (Winter 1979), 68-75; Darlene Coward Wight, Holman: Forty Years of Graphic Art (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2001); and Evelyn Blackeman-Crofford, Holman 1990 Annual Graphics Collection (Holman: Holman Eskimo Co-operative, 1990).
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CURATORIAL NOTES
Annie Pootoogook: Cutting Ice McMichael Canadian Art Collection SEPTEMBER 2, 2017–FEBRUARY 11, 2018 KLEINBURG, ON
Annie Pootoogook (1969–2016 Kinngait) — Morning Routine 2003 Coloured pencil and ink 51 × 66 cm ALL ARTWORKS REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION DORSET FINE ARTS ALL IMAGES COURTESY MCMICHAEL CANADIAN ART COLLECTION
by Nancy Campbell
It has been difficult for me to speak publicly about Annie Pootoogook (1969–2016) and thus, until the occasion of this exhibition, I had chosen to remain quiet, believing that ultimately her drawings would, over time, speak for her and tell her story. However, the arc of her exceptional life and pre-mature death captured public attention to such a degree that it has woven itself into the contemporary fabric of life in Canada today. The intricacies of Annie’s short 47 years speak both to possibility and heartbreak, the complex realities of truth and reconciliation, Inuit Art Quarterly
the richness of family and community and the depths of tragedy. In turn, her drawings depict a community in transition, one that respects its past and is negotiating its future. I knew Annie. We worked together intensely in Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, between 2004 and 2010. The time I spent with her altered my world view and taught me about the North and the importance of community. Annie was serious about her art, proud of her accomplishments and prolific in her creation. When I first saw her work, I was captivated by its clarity, astute 58
composition and honesty. I strongly felt that Annie’s unique drawings should be seen by as many people as possible. As a curator, I worked collaboratively with a group of people that included friends, colleagues, the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative (WBEC), Feheley Fine Arts, in Toronto, ON, and collectors of Annie’s early drawings in order to make that happen. This exhibition is a testament to the immense impact of Annie’s artistic vision and, in many ways, is the realization of that early impulse to share her work. I would also like to acknowledge Summer 2018
CURATORIAL NOTES
The directness of Annie’s imagery challenged both Southern viewers’ and her fellow artists’ expectations of what pictures of the North should look like.
the support of WBEC, Feheley Fine Arts and Annie’s friends and family in Kinngait. This project was conceived with their input and holds at its centre the people and wonderful things about community life in Kinngait, such as camping, feasting, hunting and family, that Annie loved. Annie began drawing seriously in 1997 at WBEC’s Kinngait Studios, where she worked continuously until 2006 and during which she refined her singular artistic approach. Although some of her pictures show life on the land, Annie is perhaps best known for her charming and accurate interior scenes, such as getting ready for a date, eating country food, watching television or playing cards. She was also determined to reveal the difficult social, economic and physical realities of today’s North, including influences from the South, violence, substance abuse and a fractured social safety net. As a third-generation artist, Annie was raised with access to television and other media from the South, references of which appear in her drawings through depictions of Jerry Springer, Dr. Phil and Saddam Hussein. Some of her more controversial works boldly reveal the impacts of addiction and abuse in her life and in her community. Annie’s images of these social ills persist as raw and straightforward accounts. Annie worked daily, alongside fellow artists Jutai Toonoo (1959–2015), Ohotaq Mikkigak (1936–2014) and her cousins Itee Pootoogook (1951–2014), Siassie Kenneally and Shuvinai Ashoona, RCA, all of whom were included in Cutting Ice. Annie’s fellow artists were both perplexed and fascinated by her personal approach and contemporary
content. During the early 2000s the drawing studios were busy and a new energy was palpable. I was a regular observer in the room, which was astonishingly quiet. Often the only sound was the radio playing. Annie and her cohort riffed off each other and experimented with new media and approaches under the gentle suggestion of the co-op. If something appeared particularly popular with buyers, each would adapt it in their own way. Many began to draw what they saw, at times extracting an object from the composition and isolating it on the page. Some, such as Itee, used photographs for inspiration. They made larger drawings, tried oil stick and sought new content as seen in Marijuana (2013) by Jutai, an overhead composition of a potted plant, set against a pulsating red background, or Annie’s erotic pictures, including Making Love (2003–4) or Composition (Watching Porn on Television) (2005). It took me a number of visits to Kinngait to gain the trust of the studio artists. Annie, in particular, was exceedingly evasive and private. She spoke about her drawings in vague terms, often denying that many of the stories were about her own life and were rather those of “someone she knew.” Sitting quietly in the studio for many hours, having lunch together, going for walks and being mindful of listening, rather than interpreting her work for her, was a worthwhile exercise and over time allowed Annie to tell the stories of her life on her own terms. The directness of Annie’s imagery challenged both Southern viewers’ and her fellow artists’ expectations of what pictures of the North should look like. The idyllic images of hunting
Installation view of Annie Pootoogook: Cutting Ice at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 2018
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CURATORIAL NOTES
Annie Pootoogook — Sculptor with Pipe 2003–4 Coloured pencil and ink 51 × 66 cm
It may be a while before the true nature of [Annie]’s death is understood, and it is certainly not for us to say she should never have taken that wild ride through that world of art and media and commerce. She had her glory days, and when we look at the legacy of work she left behind, the pleasure and satisfaction she enjoyed in communicating about her Northern world is palpable.¹ Ultimately, Annie’s contribution to Canadian and Inuit art history is difficult to quantify. Her arresting images captured the world’s attention, cracking the glass ceiling and opening the door for other Inuit artists and Inuit Art Quarterly
their work to be included in discussions of contemporary art. As the number of artists, curators, cultural sector workers, dealers, scholars and teachers advocating for Inuit art continues to grow, Annie’s work will serve to expand the conversation around Inuit art and its presence in, or absence from, our understanding of contemporary art in this country. Annie was, fundamentally, a narrator, and despite the pressures and preconceived ideas of what Inuit art is, her drawings will continue to help us rethink what art from the North can be. There is much to celebrate when looking at the possibilities Annie’s work has afforded us in thinking through Inuit art in Canada and the world in new ways. Thank you, Annie.²
and other traditional activities that were characteristic of the earliest Inuit artworks available in the South represented a way of life that has subsided under the increasing pressures of globalization. Non-Inuit viewers often look at the art of Inuit with nostalgia, seeking in it a last glimpse of the disappearing natural world. As writer Sarah Milroy noted in a memorial piece about Annie in The Globe and Mail:
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Sarah Milroy, “Inuit artist Annie Pootoogook’s work revealed the connections between us,” The Globe and Mail, Friday, September 23, 2016. 2 Parts of this text will appear in the exhibition catalogue for the tenth edition of the Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art, Beautiful World Where Are You? 1
Summer 2018
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REVIEW
Field Guide: Determined by the river Remai Modern
Irene Avaalaaqiaq Tiktaalaaq (b. 1941 Qamani’tuaq) — All Different Thoughts 1978 Stencil 56.8 × 76.5 cm THE MENDEL ART GALLERY COLLECTION AT REMAI MODERN ALL IMAGES COURTESY REMAI MODERN
OCTOBER 21, 2017–JANUARY 7, 2018 SASKATOON, CANADA
by Alison Cooley
Determined by the river (2017) is the poetic first gesture in the Remai Modern’s inaugural exhibition, Field Guide, curated by Gregory Burke and Sandra Guimarães. A “first gesture” not only because Duane Linklater and Tanya Lukin Linklater’s smart, collections-based installation urges its audiences to think carefully about the history and future of the gallery on the occasion of its unveiling, but also because the work occupies the Connect Gallery, the Remai’s free, ground-floor space—making it the initial (and potentially only) encounter for the gallery’s attendees. The duo take the Saskatchewan River as the project’s conceptual core, building the skeleton of a boat as an alternative display apparatus, and installing works by Indigenous Inuit Art Quarterly
artists from The Mendel Art Gallery Collection at Remai Modern in conversation with their own sculptural gestures. The river, and its accompanying multiform narratives of connectivity, fertility, trade, sustenance, migration, extraction, settlement and temporality, is not only the project’s subject but also its site, with the Remai being on the banks of the River Landing development, which bills itself as “Saskatchewan’s premier residential and destination centre.”¹ Configured across the apparatus of the ship’s framework, works by William Noah, Irene Avaalaaqiaq Tiktaalaaq, RCA, Eli Tikeayak (1933–1996), Allen Sapp, OC, RCA, Robert Houle, RCA, Ruth Cuthand, Daphne Odjig, CM, OBC, RCA, George Tatanniq 62
(1910–1991), Kenojuak Ashevak, CC, ON, RCA (1927–2013), Laurent Aksadjuak (1935–2002), and Pudlo Pudlat (1916–1992) are propped across a set of low shelves— a strategy that suggests a precise partialness, as if these works could be reconsidered and reconfigured based on conversations and emergent relations between them. The works are not anchored but ready to move and enliven each other. Angagok Conjuring Birds (1979), by Jessie Oonark, OC, RCA (1906–1985), feels brightly characteristic of this relationship between works—conversational, enchanting, curious. Lori Blondeau’s Lonely Surfer Squaw (1997) is particularly familiar as a key work from The Mendel Art Gallery Collection Summer 2018
REVIEW
Tanya Lukin Linklater (b. 1976 Agw’aneq) and Duane Linklater — Determined by the river 2017 Collaborative installation and discursive event
Read generously, there is grace to this arrangement, honouring the scale of these works, imagining holding them, recognizing the history of early Inuit carvings as small, portable figures.
at Remai Modern and its presence in Determined by the river attests to the contemporary narratives of Indigenous art in Saskatchewan that the Remai Modern is tasked with holding. Imagio Pietatis— A New Wave for Ozone (1990), by Robert Boyer, RCA, is positioned at the front of the installation and functions like a pennant, its geometry bold and beacon-like. Other works are less forceful, their configurations more ambivalent. Linklater’s Erratics (2017) are framed snapshots positioned throughout the installation—found photographs of rock outcroppings, formed through ancient glacial erosion, populated by smiling tourists and families. There’s a striking tension in these small works, which contrasts the immensity of geology’s timescale with the mundanity and immediacy of strangers’ encounters with them. The structure of the installation both invites and resists closer inspection of works like these; there is no opportunity to climb aboard and examine more thoroughly, and the works themselves deny the desire to see or contextualize them. The figures in the photographs, their relationship to these far-transported rocks and the specificity of the landscape in which they appear all remain unavailable. A similar play between desire, expertise and comfort is at play in the placement
of several small steatite sculptures (works by Tikeayak, Aksadjuak, Tatanniq and two unknown artists), which are perched delicately on the shelves, near to other works, almost domestically. Read cynically, this placement recalls mantlepieces and curiosity cabinets, referencing the potential hubris of collecting and acknowledging the market for Inuit sculpture as a tourist commodity. Read generously, there is grace to this arrangement, honouring the scale of these works, imagining holding them, recognizing the history of early Inuit carvings as small, portable figures. Lukin Linklater’s Topographies of dissent in several parts (2017), a series of sculptural works made from sand, canvas, tarp, rope, horse hair, buckets, stone, plastic and scarves, poetically and carefully tugs at some of the tensions apparent in the other works. These works evoke pilling, filling, tying, casting and pulling—their simple materialities emblematic of the entanglements between natural and manufactured, Indigenous and settler, and power and vulnerability. Determined by the river is an incredible and deeply nuanced work. In describing the discursive events that accompany the installation (featuring Blondeau, Cuthand, Tasha Hubbard, Joi T. Arcand, Erica Violet Lee, Billy-Ray Belcourt and Elwood Jimmy),
the Linklaters ask “What does it mean for Indigenous peoples to be in relation to museums? What does it mean for museums to be in relation to Indigenous peoples?” The elegance with which the duo enfolds other artists and the collection into this conversation is impressive. But, I’m skeptical that these questions and propositions are taken seriously within Field Guide as a whole. Outside of Determined by the river, there’s a distinct lack of contemporary Canadian Indigenous work in the far-reaching show. Including Determined by the river as an artist project within the broader rubric of the exhibition feels opportunistic—a strategic, institutional move that doesn’t fully grapple with Indigenous histories or reckon with the Remai’s longer-term curatorial and organizational responsibilities. The Linklaters offer an extremely nuanced and imaginative set of tools for rethinking and tying together complex entanglements of objects, tactics and communities on the Prairies. But does the Remai have the capacity to effectively communicate the subtleties of the project or the urgencies of the questions raised by it? And perhaps more importantly, how is the Remai equipped (or willing) to engage in the real dialogue with Indigenous peoples that Determined by the river demands?
NOTES
The language of tourism is evident not just in River Landing’s branding (see riverlanding.ca), but has been a notable preoccupation for other critics writing on the Remai Modern, including Jen Budney (“The Remai Effect,” Canadian Art, October 26, 2017) and Amy Luo (“Prairie Modern,” Frieze, December 6, 2017), who question the institution’s positioning as a “destination centre.”
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REVIEW
niigaanikwewag Art Gallery of Mississauga
Installation view of Modern Day Syllabics (2008–16) by Rolande Souliere, Fringe (2013) by Rebecca Belmore, RCA and onjishkawigaabawin (2015) by Olivia Whetung PHOTO TONI HAFKENSCHEID
FEBRUARY 22–APRIL 15, 2018 MISSISSAUGA, CANADA
by Thirza Cuthand
Leader women. This is the core concept of curator Rhéanne Chartrand’s recent exhibition niigaanikwewag, which brings together and creates dialogues between the works of 16 powerful Indigenous women artists. The exhibition opens with an epic abstract painting by Rita Letendre, OC, OOnt, RCA, titled Sunset (1971), evoking the cycle of death and eventual rebirth of each new day. Nearby, Caroline Monnet’s Creatura Dada (2016) captures a group of six women having a sumptuous dinner while revelling in their combined power as Indigenous creative women. This video work succinctly and directly sets up the overarching theme of the exhibition, the web of conversations and ideas shared between Indigenous women. The following room features a second work by Letendre, a small silkscreen titled Moon Beam (1971), which is positioned above the door. The piece, notes Chartrand, is a reminder of women’s “intimate connection to the cycles of Grandmother Moon.” By positioning Letendre’s work at the entrances to both sections of the gallery space, the exhibition is anchored, both by the work Inuit Art Quarterly
of a notable Indigenous elder artist and by pieces that abstractly conjure the female body. Directly adjacent to Letendre’s print, Vanessa Dion Fletcher’s beaded menstrual stains in Mark (2016) are a more overt corporeal reference. Delicate and richly beaded in varying shades of red, the seven textural patterns are modelled on the artist’s own menstrual stains and are affixed to a light floral pattern fabric, the wall colour beyond them is itself work. For Home Depot Colour Match (2016), Dion Fletcher brought her own menstrual blood to the home improvement store to be matched as a custom paint colour. In my own community there has been a lot of conflicting opinions on women’s moon time, with some women being rejected or shamed into not participating in ceremonies. Closely related to skirt-shaming, the taboos on menstruation that persist amongst some Indigenous communities make Dion Fletcher’s work all the more crucial within the context of this show. Similarly striking is a series by Olivia Whetung, titled onjishkawigaabawin (2015), 64
that features five panels of unfinished beadwork designs suspended within steel frame looms. Whetung’s patterns are based on ones found in the book The Crafts of the Ojibwa, a 1943 text published by the Office of Indian Affairs in the United States, which does not credit the Indigenous designers of the patterns. The missing beads speak of Indigenous erasure, both as labourers and creators. They also hint at absence. It is impossible to expect that a show of this scope could contain the full breadth of work being made by Indigenous women today —the missing beads, then, call forward those artists who are not included and most profoundly those missing women who will not be able to make work at all. Still, the theme of resilience carries the exhibition forward. Rosalie Favel’s Transformation (1999) pictures the wellknown figure of 90s television character Xena, Warrior Princess, transforming into Favel’s Plain(s) Warrior Artist as embodied by the artist herself. Favel’s creation of her own heroine, modelled in her own image, speaks to the power of self-representation Summer 2018
by and for Indigenous women and their future relations. In this same vein Untitled (2003) by Annie Pootoogook (1969–2016) depicts a peaceful and tender domestic scene of a mother breastfeeding her child while her partner adjusts a stereo. Despite the systemic issues facing so many Indigenous children in Canada, including the high proportion of them being removed from loving homes because of things like poverty and intergenerational contact with the child welfare system, there is a hopefulness to this work that this family will stay together through mutual love and care. Although niigaanikwewag successfully highlights a multitude of women’s experiences, I’m left wondering if the curator has played it safe. I’m curious, for instance, why one of Pootoogook’s more challenging works, such as those depicting domestic violence or addiction or homelessness wasn’t chosen. This said, Indigenous trauma is so over represented, consumed and expected by settler Canadians that perhaps there is more power in denying this view. Ultimately, through centring the strong voices and inspiring works of numerous celebrated Indigenous women artists, including Kenojuak Ashevak, CC, ON, RCA (1927–2013), Christie Belcourt, Rebecca Belmore, RCA, Joane Cardinal-Shubert, RCA, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Meryl McMaster, Marianne Nicolson, Shelley Niro, RCA, Daphne Odjig, CM, OBC, RCA and Rolande Souliere, as well as those discussed above, Chartrand has curated an exhibition that links conversations within the communities of these artists, such as those of self-determination, language, environmental stewardship, family, storytelling and identity, to the world beyond. The strength of these Indigenous women artists leads us toward the promise of the fortified spirit of Indigenous peoples.
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TRIBUTE
In Memoriam: The Inuit Art Quarterly Remembers
Elisapee Inukpuk (1938–2018)
© INUIT ART FOUNDATION, 2000
Celebrated textile artist Elisapee Inukpuk began making dolls in childhood, learning to sew by watching her mother make kamiik (boots). Over time, she developed her own unique style, incorporating woven grass bases and carved steatite heads, often in collaboration with her husband, artist Charlie Inukpuk, who would make the dolls’ heads for her. Born near Inukjuak, Inukpuk later moved with her family to Kangirqsukallaq. Inukpuk’s dolls often capture Inuit legends or figures in the midst of daily activities, including hunting, throat singing, sewing and stretching sealskin. When asked about her doll making in IAQ 11.4, she explained, “After the clothes are finished, I put them on the doll and it literally becomes a person. That’s the part I like the best.” Outspoken in her support for artistic freedom, Inukpuk noted the negative impact anti-seal hunt activist groups had on her work, explaining, “I used to make attractive dolls from sealskin, but we were informed that the people who feel sorry for the animals do not want those kind of dolls anymore. . . . The dolls won’t be purchased in the southern stores because of the impact [activists] had on the market.” Despite this pressure, Inukpuk was steadfast in her belief that artists should continue creating, stating, “We should not be held back just because the local stores don’t buy anymore. We should just go ahead with our given talents and sew.” Throughout her career, Inukpuk enjoyed passing her skills forward, teaching doll making and sewing to the next generation. Inukpuk’s work has been widely exhibited in Canada and is held in many private collections. In addition to her work as an artist, Inukpuk was a respected elder in her community. “We were given our hands at birth to use,” she explained in a 1996 interview with IAQ. Inukpuk will long be remembered for her dedication to both her artmaking and her community.
Lukie Airut (1942–2018)
Inuit Art Quarterly
© INUIT ART FOUNDATION, 1997
Artist Lukie Airut, known for his intricate and multidimensional sculptures, was born in an outpost camp on Qikiqtaaluk (Baffin Island)’s Alanarjuk Lake, in Nunavut, and later moved to Iglulik, NU, to study carving with artist Pacome Kolaut (1925–1968). Although skilled with stone, Airut eventually shifted his focus to whalebone and walrus ivory—media that allowed him to create highly detailed works in increasing scale. In addition to his notable skill as an artist, Airut’s contributions to his community established him as a significant figure in Iglulik. “Lukie was revered in the community for his knowledge,” explains writer Sonia Gunderson, who spent a great deal of time with the artist between 2007 and 2008. Gunderson lived with the Airut family for several months and came to know him as an honoured figure in Iglulik. “He was very respected for [his] traditional knowledge and skill.” A keen hunter, Airut’s understanding of and relationship with Arctic wildlife were often reflected in his work. Some of Airut’s most imposing pieces feature scenes rendered in the cavities of massive whale and walrus bones, while his unique use of incised detailing earned him international recognition—his works have been exhibited in Canada, the US, Europe and Japan. His sculptures are also part of the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre. “He was a gentle and humble man,” remembers RJ Ramrattan, Showroom Manager at Canadian Arctic Producers. “He was a brilliant artist and an ambassador of the Inuit art world.” Airut’s inspiring work and passionate worldview will be sorely missed. 66
Summer 2018
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David Ruben Piqtoukun, Angry Loon, 2006
Sam Sarick, one of the country’s most prolific and philanthropic collectors of Inuit art, passed away on March 26, 2018. Sam and his wife, Esther, began collecting Inuit art in the early 1960s, over time assembling a significant collection of works from across the Canadian North. Sam travelled throughout the North and was regarded as a friend and valiant supporter of many artists. In a recent phone call, Bill Nasogaluak, an artist championed by the Saricks, offered his condolences saying, “Sam and Esther have the largest collection of my work. If a work was good enough for Sam, it was good enough for everybody. They were the standardbearers, and they set the bar very high.” The Saricks have made significant donations of Inuit art to institutions, including the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, the Winnipeg Art Gallery and most notably the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), to which the Saricks have donated several thousand works since the early 1990s. “Sam was truly a connoisseur collector,” explains Norman Zepp, former Curator of Inuit Art at the AGO, who worked closely with the Sarick Collection. “He and Esther had the most magnificent collection of Inuit art assembled in private hands, remarkable in its scope as well as its depth. The collection included works from most communities across the Canadian Arctic and by nearly every significant artist—often their finest pieces. It is quite wonderful that his legacy remains. That the Sarick Collection is now permanently at the [AGO] is a gift to the county and to Inuit art. Sam was always a gentleman, always supportive. He will be dearly missed.” Sam, whose dedication to sharing Inuit art has left a tremendous impact on the field, was an active Board Member of both the AGO and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. He was also a steadfast supportor of the IAF, serving as a member of the inaugural Editorial Advisory of the Inuit Art Quarterly (starting in 1986) and as a founding member of the Inuit Art Foundation’s Board of Directors from 1988 to 1993.
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NEWS
Updates and highlights from the world of Inuit art and culture
BELOW
The recently constructed Kenojuak Cultural Centre in Kinngait, NU, 2018 PHOTO KUDLIK CONSTRUCTION
OPPOSITE
Juanisialu Irqumia (1912–1977 Puvirnituq) — Owl with Its Prey 1960 Stonecut 39.8 x 62.1 cm PHOTO BERNARD CLARK
NFB Indigenous Collection Goes Digital On March 22, 2018, the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) premiered its Indigenous Cinema webpage, which houses more than 200 films by Indigenous directors. Films by First Nations, Métis and Inuit directors from across Canada, in English and in French, can be found on the page, which was created to make it easier for the public to access Indigenous perspectives of Canada’s past, present and future. Bonnie Ammaaq, an Inuk director from Iglulik, NU, is one of 19 Inuit directors currently featured on the website. Her short film Nowhere Land (2015), which tells the story of her family’s life on the land and their return to Iglulik, won the award for Best Short Documentary at the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival. Eventually, the NFB’s entire collection of nearly 300 films will be available for free on the website. New Start for Ulukhaktok Graphic Program
KCC Completed
In early March 2018, nearly two years of construction came to an end as the Kenojuak Cultural Centre and Print Shop (KCC) was completed. The West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative, the centre’s main tenants, have already begun moving artworks into the print shop. A powerful sense of community has been, and will continue to be, the driving force behind the KCC’s creation and operation, at all levels. Architectural firm Panaq Design and contractors Kudlik Construction, both Iqaluit-based, Inuit-led companies, worked as a team to bring the building to life, while the community of Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, where the centre is located, also contributed significantly to the project. Although the federal and territorial governments provided the majority of the funding, $3 million had to be provided by the private sector. As reported by the IAQ in the Spring 2018 issue,
Inuit Art Quarterly
this goal was reached in December 2017, with nearly $3.3 million raised—and the hamlet provided a large portion of that extra funding. “The community itself, through bingos and all, managed to contribute quite a lot of money as well,” Alain Fournier, Vice-President of Architecture and Project Manager at Panaq Design, said. “The community was really behind the project.” Extensive consultations will be held with local residents in order to plan exhibitions, in advance of the KCC’s scheduled grand opening in the late summer or early fall of 2018.
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Arctic Co-operatives Limited and Canadian Arctic Producers will be spearheading an effort to revitalize graphic artmaking in Ulukhaktok (Holman), Inuvialuit Settlement Region, NT, almost two decades after the community’s last formal print release. A total of $250,000 was secured from the Canada Council for the Arts to engage established and emerging artists, including Mary Okheena, Peter Palvik and Mabel Nigiyok, to experiment with materials and styles with help from an advisory committee composed of the Inuit Art Foundation’s Board Members Heather Igloliorte and Patricia Feheley and Executive Director Alysa Procida. The grant is also supporting the digitization of the community’s graphic archive, stretching back to the earliest graphic experiments of Agnes Nanogak Goose, Helen Kalvak, CM, RCA and Mark Emerak. To learn more about this unique archive, be sure to see a profile written by Arctic Co-op’s Collections Manager Katheryn Wabegijig in the IAQ’s next issue.
Summer 2018
NEWS
NGC Announces Curators for 58th Venice Biennale Following the news that Isuma will represent Canada at the 2019 Venice Biennale, the National Gallery of Canada (NGC) has confirmed that, for the first time in the pavilion’s history, the project will be curated by a team. The curatorial team includes Asinnajaq, a visual artist, filmmaker and curator; Catherine Crowston, Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Art Gallery of Alberta; Josée Drouin-Brisebois, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Canada; Barbara Fischer, Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery and Director of the University of Toronto Art Centre; and Candice Hopkins, an independent curator and writer. The Canadian exhibition at the Biennale has historically been organized by a single curator, but collaboration seems to be a defining theme for this highly anticipated show. “Because [Isuma is] a collective, I think it’s more natural for them to think of working with a collective,” said Asinnajaq. “I think everyone’s really proud of [the team] and everyone is attentive to each other.” The curatorial team was handpicked by Isuma. According to Hopkins, “[Isuma] also felt it was important to have mentorship built into the team, so, in effect, we are
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learning from one another as well as from Isuma.” Both Asinnajaq and Hopkins have curated projects with Isuma, while DrouinBrisebois and Fischer have both previously curated Biennale exhibitions for the Canada Pavilion. Crowston was the 2016 Commissioner for the Canada Pavilion at Venice’s International Architecture Exhibition. “Inuit art has long impacted a huge global audience,” explains Hopkins, when asked about Inuit art on the world stage. “[This exhibition] will loop back to that history, but also to people’s real lives in the North. And that is really something that is a shared goal between Isuma and the curatorial team for the pavilion.” Inuit Artists at the Indigenous Music Awards The 2018 CBC Music Indigenous Music Awards were held on May 18, 2018, honouring some of the best First Nations, Métis and Inuit musicians in Canada today. Several Inuit artists were nominated for awards. Iqaluit-based band The Trade-Offs were nominated for Best Blues Album for Qaumariaq and Kelly Fraser’s album Sedna was nominated for Best Pop Album. Fraser was recently featured in the IAQ’s 30th Anniversary issue Portfolio, “30 Artists to Know.” Shelter as we go. . . by Quantum
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Tangle, a duo that includes Inuk artist Tiffany Ayalik, was nominated for Best Pop Album. And Northern Haze, a rock band from Iglulik, NU, was nominated for Best Inuit, Indigenous Language or Francophone Album, for Sinnaktuq. Northern Haze’s first, self-titled album, released in 1985, was the first Indigenous-language rock album recorded in North America. Early Prints from Puvirnituq Donated to Agnes Etherington Art Centre In March 2018, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen’s University in Kingston, ON, received a collection of 23 stonecut and stencil prints from Puvirnituq, Nunavik, QC, as a gift from Margaret McGowan. The prints represent the early years of printmaking in the community, from 1961 to 1989, and depict animals and hunting scenes and scenes of daily life. McGowan and her husband also set up a Research Studentship in Indigenous Art, with a focus on Inuit art. Dr. Norman Vorano, Curator of Indigenous Art at the centre, said, “This donation will help us present a more comprehensive and comparative history of Arctic printmaking, and through the research studentship will also help attract Indigenous students and support a diverse array of graduate and upper-year undergraduate research.”
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UMMA Receives Inuit Art Collection and Generous Endowment In March 2018, the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) in Ann Arbor, received $2 million from community members Philip and Kathy Power for the creation and endowment of an Inuit art program at the university. This contribution was given in addition to a large collection of Inuit stone sculptures and prints, numbering more than 200 and valued at more than $2.5 million. “Kathy and I decided to gift [this collection] to UMMA so as many people as possible could experience it, and understand how Inuit understand and cope with their harsh Arctic environment,” said Power. Revitalized AGO Centre Features Indigenous Art On June 1, 2018, the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) re-opened the J.S. McLean Centre for Indigenous and Canadian Art (previously the J.S. McLean Centre for Canadian Art) after months of renovation. The centre now features historic and contemporary works by Indigenous and Canadian artists side by side. “The McLean Centre revitalization will enable the AGO to showcase contemporary
Indigenous art in conversation with Canadian art and to highlight critical discussions about identity, the environment, history and sovereignty,” said Wanda Nanibush, Curator, Indigenous Art in the Department of Indigenous and Canadian Art. The centre’s Inuit collection will show works by renowned and emerging artists alike, such as Shuvinai Ashoona, RCA, Jessie Oonark, OC, RCA and Annie Pootoogook. Inuit art and sculpture will also occupy its own, dedicated space in the centre, and works will feature texts written in Inuktut, English and French. First Indigenous Fashion Week Between May 31 and June 3, 2018, the first Indigenous Fashion Week Toronto (IFWTO) took place, presenting progressive Indigenous artists in a series of showcases, lectures, exhibitions, panels and workshops, along with a marketplace where artists could sell their work. “Our community is bursting at the seams with new works in fashion, craft and textiles, and we are proud to be recognizing their artistry,” said Sage Paul, Artistic Director of IFWTO. “This year’s program of artists and designers represents the diversity of design,
expression and tradition from nations across North America and Greenland.” Victoria Kakuktinniq of Victoria’s Arctic Fashion, Barbara Akoak of Inuk Barbie, Erica Lugt and Hinaani Design were among the Inuit designers represented in the showcase. Tanya Lukin Linklater Wins First Wanda Koop Research Fund On March 20, 2018, Canadian Art announced artist Tanya Lukin Linklater as the winner of the magazine’s inaugural Wanda Koop Research Fund, valued at $15,000. The award recognizes a mid-career visual artist and is intended for research activities related to the artist’s practice. Lukin Linklater was chosen for her “complex, engaging, multi dimensional and inspiring” work, according to Julie Nagam, Chair in the History of Indigenous Art in North America at the Winnipeg Art Gallery and the University of Winnipeg, and one of the judges. Lukin Linklater is a multidisciplinary artist, working in performance, video, installation and photography. She was featured in the IAQ’s Summer 2016 issue, Performance, and contributed a Comment in the Summer 2017 issue. Her work has been featured in exhibitions in North America and abroad.
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Timootee “Tim” PITSIULAK, Beluga whales and a bowhead, 2016. Black ink on paper. Photo: EVOQ Architecture.
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Tabea Murphy Nain
Nunatsiavummiuk elder Tabea Murphy’s highly detailed and delicately rendered pen and coloured pencil drawings of daily life in Nunatsiavut are highly sought after in the region, so much so that a handful of her original graphics have been reproduced in limited print runs to meet demand. This work, depicting a woman in the midst of hand sewing a pair of kamiik (boots), is demonstrative of their sweet and quotidian appeal. Murphy, an expert seamstress, is intimately familiar with the concentration, steadiness and time required to produce such garments—knowledge that is embedded in the details of this piece. With downcast eyes and braided hair held back with a charming blue bow, Murphy’s subject carefully sews the top edge of the kamik, her thimble-protected index finger expertly guiding her needle and thread. Nearby, her tools—pincushion, scissors, ulu (woman’s knife)— stand at the ready. Above, she is framed in a halo of sealskin. The composition is evocative of religious art works, where the heads and bodies of saints or other sacred figures are surrounded in nimbi, radiant circles often depicted in glowing gold. In Murphy’s work, however, gilt is substituted with something much more valuable. The stretched sealskin that surrounds the figure speaks both to the integral role of seal in Inuit communities, while nodding to it’s continued use and importance. Seal is present in the seamstress’ existing kamiik, in the ones she is in the process of creating and also at the ready for future needs. Kamiliuttuk (c. 1985), then, can be read as a tribute to the shared histories and futures of Inuit communities across Inuit Nunangat and their relationships to seals, emphasizing the continuity and cycle of these foundational creatures to Inuit life.
Tabea Murphy (b. 1940 Nain) — Kamiliuttuk c. 1985 Pen and coloured pencil 34.9 × 27.9 cm COLLECTION THE NUNATSIAVUT GOVERNMENT COURTESY THE ROOMS PHOTO NED PRATT PHOTOGRAPHY
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