Inuit Art Quarterly - Break Up: Art in a Changing North

IN THIS ISSUE:

Kablusiak Talking Back to Inuit Art — Day Break 4 Photographers Welcome the Sun — Expo Revisited 55 Years of Ookpik

Break Up

Art in a Changing North

CONTENTS

35.1

Inuit Art Quarterly Break Up

Front

Features

Back TRIBUTE

05 From the Editor

58 Levi Alasua Pirti Smith

by Janice Grey

06 Meet the Contributors

CURATORIAL NOTES

60 ᓴᓇᓐᖑᐊᓂᑎᒍᑦ ᒪᑭᑕᖃᑎᒌᓐᓂᖅ Sanannguanitigut Makitaqatigiinniq Standing Together Through Art Debout ensemble à travers l’art

by Olivia Thomassie

08 Impact Update 5 WORKS

16

Breaking Dawn

18

Victor Ekootak

by Jamesie Fournier

66 News

CHOICE

68 Janet Nungnik

CHOICE

LAST LOOK

20 Joseph Angatajuak

by Tenille K. Campbell ARTISTS’ CORNER

24 Inuit-led Juries PROFILE

26 Aedan Uviluq Corey

by Kavelina Torres

ARTIST PROJECT

30 Spring Thaw

Four Inuit photographers document the changes spring brings to their landscapes, creating companions for their fall images in Freeze Up.

40 Fucking Around with Inuit Art

by Billy-Ray Belcourt

How Kablusiak’s art defies politicization and Indigenous tropes.

LEGACY

50 Apparitions: Exposure of Inuit Art at Expo ’67

by Emily Laurent Henderson What the iconic world fair meant for Inuit art and artists.

ON THE COVER

Kablusiak — Plucked Ookpik 2021 Felt, fibre fill and embroidery floss 14 × 8.9 × 14 cm COURTESY NORBERG HALL © THE ARTIST

LEFT

Menu at La Toundra restaurant at Expo ’67, featuring part of the engraving Summer Migration (1965) by Jamesie Teevee COURTESY MCGILL DIGITAL ARCHIVES

ABOVE

Holly Andersen — Spring Tea 2013 Digital photograph © THE ARTIST

Break Up

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Front

MASTHEAD PUBLISHER

EDITORIAL

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

The Inuit Art Quarterly is published by the Inuit Art Foundation.

Executive Director and Publisher Alysa Procida

President Heather Igloliorte Montreal, QC

Editorial Director Britt Gallpen

Vice-President Reneltta Arluk Banff, AB

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 Reconciliation Secretariat at Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada and the Department of Canadian Heritage, as well as the Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts and Ontario Creates.

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: March 15, 2022 ISSN 0831-6708 Publication Mail Agreement #40050252 Postmaster send address changes to Inuit Art Foundation.

Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Inuit Art Foundation 1655 Dupont Street Toronto, ON, M6P 3T1 (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 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.

Inuit Art Quarterly

Deputy Editor Sue Carter Associate Editor Napatsi Folger Associate Editor Lisa Frenette Associate Editor Jessica MacDonald Assistant Editor Nadine Ryan Contributing Editor Leanne Inuarak-Dall Contributing Editor Bronson Jacque

Secretary-Treasurer Julie Grenier Kuujjuaq, Nunavik, QC Jamie Cameron Toronto, ON Linda Grussani Ottawa, ON Goretti Kakuktinniq Kangiqliniq, NU Michael Massie Kippens, NL Ryan Rice Toronto, ON

Copy Editor Tiffany Larter Fact Checker Amy Prouty Advertising Manager Nicholas Wattson Art Director (Interim) Maegan Fidelino Colour Gas Company Printing Interprovincial Group —

FOUNDATION Strategic Initiatives Director Heather Campbell

Inuvialuit Settlement Region Community Liaison Darcie Bernhardt

Igloo Tag Coordinator Blandina Attaarjuaq Makkik

Nunatsiavut Community Liaison Jessica Winters

Development Manager Christa Ouimet

Nunavik Community Liaison Nancy Saunders

Operations Manager Brittany Holliss

Nunavut Community Liaison Jesse Tungilik

Executive Assistant Alyson Hardwick

Southern Canada Community Liaison Alberta Rose Williams

Administrative Assistant Kali Galbraith Archives Coordinator Madeleine Bognar

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Spring 2022

FROM THE EDITOR

If a global pandemic has taught me anything, it’s that we need ruptures to imagine new futures, even though they are often painful. This issue on Break Up considers what is made possible when we move through our discomfort and emerge on the other side, better equipped to challenge ourselves—our assumptions and limitations—in the service of building more expansive, inclusive and equitable ways forward.

Niap — A Thread of Thought 2021 Thread, fabric and paper on cardboard 35 × 14 cm COURTESY AVATAQ CULTURAL INSTITUTE PHOTO FRÉDÉRIC LAPORTE © THE ARTIST

Break Up

I confront this regularly in my work on the IAQ, which continually challenges my expectations. Even in my privileged position of working with Inuit art full time, I’m regularly confronted with art that requires me to check my biases and pushes me outside of my comfort zone. Our editorial ethos is to follow the artists. In doing so, I’m often surprised by some of the lines I’ve unconsciously drawn around what constitutes art and my expectations of it. I’ve been learning to welcome these moments and am grateful for the prompt to reconsider those lines and erase them.

This issue was a welcome opportunity to do that on a broader scale, starting with our cover story on multidisciplinary artist Kablusiak. Award-winning writer Billy-Ray Belcourt asks us to do just this by looking closely at the scaffolding of an art industry that has long been shaped by the desires and demands of its settler audiences. Similarly, this issue’s Legacy, written by Emily Laurent Henderson, considers the lasting impact of Expo ’67 on global perceptions (and assumptions) of Inuit art, the contributions of the artists involved and its far-reaching influence on contemporary Inuit art, including Kablusiak’s Plucked Ookpik (2021), among many others. Audience expectations are also explored in Janice Grey’s Tribute on Levi Alasua Pirti Smith and Tenille K. Campbell’s Choice on a ceramic work

by Joseph Angatajuak, with the latter writing, “it was humbling how I had obviously set my own parameters of what Inuit art could be.”

In many ways, the creation, celebration and consumption of Inuit art that this issue responds to has been shaped by similar dynamics. Starting with the little-known but hugely influential 1951 instructional booklet Sunuyuksuk, the push-pull of market and maker has existed in a complex and layered relationship of misaligned expectations. In previous issues of the IAQ, we have traced this thread through the rejected prints from government oversight committees, deemed unsuitable for sale because their content was labelled as “inauthentic.”

More recently, in the early 2000s, contemporary drawings from Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, were critiqued for their depictions of modern daily life in the Arctic.

If you’d like to learn more about these histories you can find these, and other stories, on the IAQ Online, anytime. These stories seem inconceivable now but are a reminder that approaches we think are good or helpful may not have been and have in fact created arbitrary limits on the artists we admire.

Over and over again, we’ve seen how our collective imagination has created unwritten rules of what is and isn’t possible for Inuit art and artists: what media, materials and subjects are allowable and who is deemed a real artist. Even at the IAQ, where we work every day to create the most expansive platforms possible for Inuit art, it remains a work in progress and one that demands our willingness to always follow the artists, wherever they lead.

I don’t believe there has ever been a better time to be a supporter of Inuit art and artists. The sheer volume and momentum of contemporary creation— from graphics to film to textiles and more—is staggering, matched only in scope and variety by our ever-increasing access to the work of beloved legacy artists through exhibition catalogues, virtual exhibitions, social media and online archives.

There are so many ways we can see, enjoy, experience and share the art that ties us together as a community. When you read the book, watch the film, listen to the song, buy the art, share the post or subscribe to the magazine you are not only supporting the individual artists involved, but helping to expand a collective understanding and appreciation of the full scope of Inuit artistic practice. This issue shows just how much richer we are for embracing it.

Britt Gallpen Editorial Director 6

Front

MEET THE CONTRIBUTORS

A behind-the-scenes look at the issue TENILLE K. CAMPBELL CHOICE: JOSEPH ANGATAJUAK PAGE 20

“When I started creating my own piece for the exhibition, I kept coming back to the idea of old stories told in translation, and how truth and memory are subjective. I kept thinking about how we remember land, and how we ground ourselves in the markers of land around us still to this day. I think that’s something we all can connect with—the idea of a journey home, the transition between space and the memory of the treelines of our youth.”

Dramatically, I imagined Ekootak, like Moses, lifting his stone tablet above his head and dashing it against the rocks below.”

“I deeply appreciated the opportunity to gather my thoughts about Kablusiak’s daring art practice, which I’ve been lucky to catch glimpses of in galleries and on social media over the last few years. They are one of the most exciting artists at work today in my humble opinion!”

JAMESIE FOURNIER

BILLY-RAY BELCOURT

CHOICE: VICTOR EKOOTAK PAGE 18

FUCKING AROUND WITH INUIT ART PAGE 40

“My parents have had a framed print of Victor Ekootak’s River Fishing (1966) since before I was born. I asked my parents and my aunt what they could tell me, if anything, about it. My aunt told me how, with lithography, after printing, the original stone or lithograph has to be destroyed to create a limited edition. Which seems like a difficult task, to destroy something you have poured so much time, effort and love into. Dramatically, I imagined Ekootak, like Moses, lifting his stone tablet above his head and dashing it against the rocks below. However, my aunt corrected me, saying that the limestone was simply sanded flat so that it may be reused once more. When I asked my parents what they could tell me about the print, they proudly replied they had cut it out of an old calendar long before I was born. I look at it now and wonder, what is on the other side?”

This issue’s contributor illustrations are by Leanne Inuarak-Dall Leanne Inuarak-Dall is an emerging writer, curator and multidisciplinary artist based on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations (Vancouver, BC). Originally from Ontario with familial ties to Mittimatalik (Pond Inlet), NU, her artistic practice seeks to articulate the stories embedded in materials and her experience as an urban Inuk raised in the South through collage, textiles, beadwork and sculpture. She is currently an Inuit Futures Illiannaqtut, completing her studies in Fine Arts at Langara College and working as a contributing editor for the Inuit Art Quarterly.

Visit her IAQ profile at inuitartfoundation.org/leanne-inuarak-dall

Inuit Art Quarterly

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Spring 2022

COVER SPOTLIGHT

IN THIS ISSUE:

Kablusiak Talking Back to Inuit Art — Day Break 4 Photographers Welcome the Sun — Expo Revisited 55 Years of Ookpik

Taking photos is a peaceful activity for me. Sometimes it feels like you’re there for a couple minutes, when actually it’s been two to three hours, and suddenly you’re looking at other stuff. It’s the scenery that transforms.”

Break Up

Art in a Changing North

NIORE IQALUKJUAK SPRING THAW PAGE 30

Kablusiak COVER SPOTLIGHT

Inuvialuk artist Kablusiak is inspired by the unconventional and humorous. Their playful knack for breaking molds is what led to the creation of Plucked Ookpik (2021), cheekily displayed on this issue’s cover.

“Originally I made a small mock-up out of felt, sort of as a joke, and sent pictures of it to my parents,” Kablusiak says. “My mom was so grossed out and I thought it was so funny. So I thought, ‘Okay, this is good. I’m going to make a legit one now.’”

The end result is a comical, featherless ookpik in blush-pink felt and covered with tiny red spots. Of the inspiration behind Plucked Ookpik, Kablusiak says, “It’s just me being funny and crass. Who would think to pluck an owl?”

In contrast, Kablusiak also created a hot-pink longhaired Furby ookpik, which is hanging out on page 49.

These two creations speak to Kablusiak’s penchant for taking something iconic—what we have come to know or expect—and bending it into new ways of existence and expression.

Through their practice, Kablusiak continues to experiment with ideas around materiality and sexuality.

Kablusiak says they are also exploring the intersection of being Inuk and being an artist, “and what the difference is between those two things and what connects them.”

EMILY LAURENT HENDERSON APPARITIONS: EXPOSURE OF INUIT ART AT EXPO ’67 PAGE 50

“Exploring the macro impacts of Expo ’67 on Inuit art and the way it has shaped the national identity of Canada has made me wonder about all the ways the long-lasting influence of Expo has impacted individual artists, artistic practices and exhibition spaces. That is definitely something I would love to explore further.”

Check out this issue’s artists at inuitartfoundation.org/spring2022 Break Up

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Front

THANK YOU

Donors make all the difference IAF Tunisijut Circle

$100,000+ RBC Foundation

With annual gifts of $1,000 or more, this incredibly dedicated group provides critical support to connect artists with opportunities and make an extraordinary impact.

$25,000–$49,999 Willmott Bruce Hunter Foundation Power Corporation of Canada

Andrew Chodos Patricia and Donald Dodds Elske and Jim Kofman David and Liz Macdonald Marion Scott Gallery John and Joyce Price and one anonymous donor

$10,000–$24,999 Bruce Bailey, in honour of Pat Feheley Susan M. Carter Colourgenics First Arts Flywheel Strategic Goring Family Foundation Erik Haites

$2,500–$4,999 Elise Brais Gabrielle Campbell Eleanor Erikson Pat Feheley Janice Gonsalves Inuit Art Society Charles C. Kingsley The Michael and Sonja Koerner Charitable Foundation Hesty Leibtag Danielle Ouiment and Paul Harper Joram Piatigorsky Paul and Carole Pizzolante Frances Scheidel

$5,000–$9,999 Rene Balcer and Carolyn Hsu-Balcer Christopher Bredt and Jamie Cameron

IAF Taqqitamaat Tunisijut Circle The Taqqitamaat Tunisijut Circle is a special group of donors who give monthly to sustain the IAF and create opportunities for artists.

Inuit Art Quarterly

Amy Adams Lea Algar-Moscoe Mary Anglim Andrea Arnold Stephen Baker Vincent and Barbara Barresi Molly Blyth Robbin Bond Christopher Bredt and Jamie Cameron Tobi Bruce Catherine Campbell Sue Carter Catherine Dean

Celia Denov Emmanuelle A. Desrochers Hal Dietz Patricia and Donald Dodds Kate Doorly Sophie Dorais Mathieu Doucette Melanie Egan Leslie E. Eisenberg Lynn Feasey Kashtin Fitzsimons Maxime Fortin Lisa Frenette Britt Gallpen and Travis Vakenti

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Monthly supporter Multi-year pledge supporter Endowment supporter Kenojuak Ashevak Memorial Award supporter Inuit Art Quarterly supporter IAQ Profiles supporter Artist Services supporter

The Herb and Cece Schreiber Foundation Hunter and Valerie Thompson and one anonymous donor $1,000–$2,499 Kristiina Alariaq, Huit Huit Tours Ltd. capedorset-inuitart.com Judy Banning Vincent and Barbara Barresi Jean Blane The Honourable Patricia Bovey Shary Boyle Ben Caesar New Hampshire Charitable Foundation’s Geoffrey E. Clark and Martha Fuller Clark Fund Stephanie Comer and Rob Craigie Yvonne C. Condell Cosentino Emily Deming

Kik and Si Gilman Anik Glaude Dr. Andrew Gotowiec Barbara Hale Andrea Hamilton Sari Hannila, in honour of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Inuit survivors, and the artists who tell Inuit stories, ᓇᑯᕐᒦᒃ Celia Harte Lisa R. Hartman Shawn Hassell Dianne Hayman

Spring 2022

THANK YOU

The Ikajuqtiit Circle changes lives all year long.

Members of the Ikajuqtiit Circle—those who help—are caring donors who protect and nurture the Inuit art community.

As Ikajuqtiit Circle members, you provide opportunities for artists to explore their practices, learn new skills and grow. You raise global awareness and appreciation of Inuit art.

The generous Ikajuqtiit Circle members listed on these pages make all this and more possible. Your support is especially critical now in these uncertain times. Thank you!

Gifts listed here were made between December 1, 2020 and December 31, 2021.

Illannarijaujut Tunngavinngmit

Mary Dailey and Paul Desmarais III Neil Devitt Marian Dodds, in honour of Dedie Dodds Arthur Drache CM QC and Judy Young Drache DUCA, in honour of Frits Albert Begemann’s legacy, in tribute to his passion for Inuit art Jon and Valerie Eliassen Fath Group/O’Hanlon Paving Ltd. Robert and Karlen Fellows Dave Forrest Alain Fournier Susan Hawkins Molly K. Heines and Thomas J. Moloney Carol Heppenstall Roger and Margaret Horton Chuck Hudson Jackman Foundation Dwaine and Leslie King Rawlson King

Katarina Kupca Lori Labatt The William and Shirley Lakey Family Fund at Edmonton Community Foundation Simon Lappi Barbara Legowski and Lewis Auerbach Ann Lesk Kathleen Lippa Christie MacInnes Susan Marrier Alison and Bruce McDonald Kathryn C. Minard Caoimhe Morgan-Feir and Graham Edge Shannon Norberg and Jarvis Hall Susan Ollila Constance V. Pathy Ann Posen, in honour of David Braidberg Andrew and Valerie Pringle

Alysa Procida and Kevin Stewart Shirley Richardson Susan Rowley H. Sanford and Deborah Riley Celine Saucier Melanie and Michael Southern David Sproule, in memory of Jean Katherine Sproule Harriet Stairs Marie-Josée Therrien Barbara Turner Gail Vanstone Craig Wilbanks and Monty Kehl Cathy and David Wilkes Susan Wortzman and Glenn Smith Norman Zepp and Judith Varga Zynga and five anonymous donors [2 , 3 ]

$500–$999 James and Marjorie Abel, in honour of Xanthipi Abel James and Marjorie Abel, in memory of Richard E. Winslow III Carole Ahmad and family Eleanor Allgood Arctic Co-operatives Limited Dr. Jim Bader and Merri Van Dyke Devony Baugh Brian and Carol Belchamber Marc Bendick Jr. and Mary Lou Egan Jurg and Christel Bieri Rev. Gary Boratto Tobi Bruce Stewart and Lissy Bryan

Bryan Hellwig Brittany Holliss Amy Jenkins Rozanne Enerson Junker Katarina Kupca Nancy and Terry Lee Rebecca Lee Mike and Cindy MacMillan Samia Madwar, in honour of Hazar Shawaf Michael Martens, in memory of Miriam Bordofsky Roxanne McCaig Kathleen and Brian Metcalfe

Elizabeth Mitchell and Stephen Lloyd Stephen Morris, in memory of Aqjangayuk Shaa Dawn Owen Clifford Papke Aarohi Patel Kara Pearce Ann Posen, in honour of David Braidberg David Pride Alysa Procida and Kevin Stewart David and Robin Procida Eva Riis-Culver

Bruno Savoie Leslie Saxon West Joanne Schmidt, in loving memory of Gail Schmidt Yu Song Michael and Melanie Southern Joyce and Fred Sparling C. Spencer David Sproule, in memory of Jean Katherine Sproule Suncor Energy Jacek Szulc Jay and Deborah Thomson Emilie Tremblay

Gail Vanstone Nicholas Wattson Gord and Laurie Webster Claude M. Weil, in honour of Jim Shirley Elka Weinstein Peggy Weller, in honoring my husband who is a poet and artist, Dr. Gary Pacermick Kim Wiebe and Aubrey Margolis Jayne Wilkinson Susan Wortzman and Glenn Smith and seven anonymous donors

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW TO SUPPORT ARTISTS, PLEASE CONTACT US AT 647-498-7717 OR VISIT US ONLINE AT INUITARTFOUNDATION.ORG. AS A REGISTERED CHARITY IN CANADA (#121033724RR001) AND THE UNITED STATES (#980140282), THE IAF WELCOMES DONATIONS, SPONSORSHIPS, LEGACY GIFTS AND IN-KIND CONTRIBUTIONS.

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Front

THANK YOU

Introduced to IAQ readers in the Winter 2020 issue, visual artist Logan Tyi Ruben, originally from Paulatuk, Inuvialuit Settlement Region, NT, uses bright colours and geometric shapes to depict landscapes from his childhood hometown. Ruben also sculpts a range of subjects, including arctic animals out of clay, in his studio where he currently lives in Cranbrook, BC. COURTESY THE ARTIST

Stephen Bulger and Catherine Lash Catherine Campbell CarData - John Domsy Lili Chester Clive and Mary Clark David Deisley Hal Dietz Harald Finkler and Nadine Nickner Yvonne and David Fleck Linda Forbes, with thanks to Dr. James Bader, DVM from Merrick Veterinary Practice Maxime Fortin Galerie D’art Vincent Susan and David Gallpen Peter and Deirdre Gardner Carol Gray Barbara Hale Patt Hall Cary Hart Ainslie Harvey Dianne Hayman Bryan Hellwig Debby and Brian Hirsch Dale Horwitz

Martin Pâquet Mark Pincus Leslie Reid Wendy Rittenhouse Bruce Roberts Prof. Nicholas A. Robinson David Runkle Kassie Ruth Paula Santrach Amalia Steinberg, in honour of Jeri Ah-Be-Hill P. Colleen Suche Suncor Energy Jay and Deborah Thomson Ann and Wayne Tompkins Dr. Joel Umlas Dr. Anne Vagi Peg and Peter Van Brunt Terry Vatrt Paddy Wales Jonathan and Katya Weisz Peggy Weller, in honoring my husband who is a poet and artist, Dr. Gary Pacermick The Wente Family Jaan Whitehead Kim Wiebe and Aubrey Margolis

Christine Hunter, in honour of Susan Hawkins Heather Igloliorte and Matthew Brulotte Lou Jungheim and Thalia Nicas, in memory of Floyd Kuptana Carola Kaegi Nancy Keppelman and Michael Smerza A. B. Kliefoth MD Jerry and Gail Korpan Val K. Lem Michael Martens, in memory of Miriam Bordofsky Keith Martin and Jackie Hatherly-Martin Patricia McKeown Mireille Menard Kathleen and Brian Metcalfe Metrix James Miller Elizabeth Mitchell and Stephen Lloyd Nancy Moore Allan Newell Suzanne O’Hara Lee and Sharon Oberlander Dawn Owen

Mark and Margie Zivin and twelve anonymous donors [3 , 1 , 5 , 2 ] $250–$499 Amy Adams Michelle Allen Beatriz Alvarez Mary Anglim Anne-Claude Bacon Birgit Både Stephen Baker Heather Beecroft Catherine Birt Stephen and Hazel Borys Christopher Bredt and Jamie Cameron, in honour of Dorothy Cameron Christopher Bredt and Jamie Cameron, in honour of Constance Bredt Christopher Bredt and Jamie Cameron, in honour of Frits and Wilhelmina Begemann Kaaren and Julian Brown Woody Brown and Christa Ouimet

LEFT

Seen here in Logan Tyi Ruben’s studio, this 2019 painting of a beloved campsite was created on a diamond-shaped canvas and depicts various viewpoints of the same subject.

The painting exemplifies the nuances of perspective that are typical of his work. © THE ARTIST

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Spring 2022

THANK YOU

IAQ offers a place for artists to understand their art practice and to find an audience.

When I first started making art, I just did it for myself, for my enjoyment and expression. I didn’t know there would be interest in my work. Realizing I could reach an audience made me consider my practice in a different way and take it more seriously. Since having my work featured in the IAQ, I have been contacted by an art gallery who saw my work in the magazine.”

LOGAN TYI RUBEN

Margaret Bursaw, in memory of John Maounis John and Elaine Butcher Denise Cargill Sue Carter Linda Cleman, in memory of Fred Cleman Louise Collins Cowley Abbott Canadian Fine Art Raymond and Charlene Thacker Currie Celia Denov Fei Disbrow Kate Doorly Sophie Dorais Nathalie Ducamp Enthusiasts of Edmonton Andy Fallas Lisa Frenette Sally and Einar Gall Britt Gallpen and Travis Vakenti Mary and Ian Glen Peter Gold and Athalie Joy Karen and George Gorsline Dr. Andrew Gotowiec Patricia Grattan Linda Grussani

Dave Haber and Dominique Ritter Linda Ham Andrea Hamilton John A. Hanjian Sari Hannila, in honour of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Inuit survivors, and the artists who tell Inuit stories. ᓇᑯᕐᒦᒃ Sally Hart Celia Harte Ian Harvey Shawn Hassell Anne Hearn Laurie Herd Joanne Hommik Mame Jackson Melinda Josie Rozanne Enerson Junker D. K. Jennipher and Jamie Kean, on behalf of Elizabeth O’Grady Dr. P. Koppinen Mary Kostman Dr. Virginia Lavin Carolyn Lawson Randy Lazarus

Nancy and Terry Lee Haidee Smith Lefebvre Gordon Leggett Dr. Ellen Lehman and Charles Kennel Kenneth R. Lister Katherine Quatermass, in honour of Love and Loss: Tales from Imagine Lands Crowdfunder Marie A. Loyer Simone Ludlow, on behalf of Max and Karl Crain Nagesh Mahanthappa George E. Marcus Dr. Neil and Elaine Margolis Paul Mayer Jim and Mary Alice Mayerle Roxanne McCaig Elizabeth McKeown G. Lester and Phyllis McKinnon Tess and Duncan McLean, in memory of Terry Ryan Robert Michaud Lise Morneau-Rousson and Yves Morneau Charles Moss/Dee Fenner

Sophia Muylwyk Mary Nelson Linda Netten Michael and Brenda Noone Louisa O’Reilly Donna and Hal Olsen Clifford Papke Alex Pappas and Ann Maners Bonnie E. Park Maria Parsons Aarohi Patel Kara Pearce Don Pether Ed and Johannes Pien LuAnn and William Polk Pauline Provencher Frank Reid and Amparo Maya Jim and Shelley Renner Eva Riis-Culver Leslie Roden-Foreman and Michael Foreman Kerstin Roger, in the name of Margerit Roger Margerit Roger Greg Rogers, in honour of the great work done by the Inuit Art Igloo Tag program

RIGHT

Logan Tyi Ruben’s portrait, Untitled (2019), was first shared with IAQ audiences in a Profile published in the Winter 2020 issue. Ruben was pleased to learn of outside interest in his work, which helped to shape his practice going forward. © THE ARTIST

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Front

THANK YOU

COURTESY THE ARTIST

Louise Rolingher, in memory of Dr. Ernest Reinhold, one of the founders of the Inuit art Enthusiasts of Edmonton Charlie Rubin Lynne B. Sagalyn Leslie Saxon West Barbara F. Schweger Turid Senungetuk, in memory of Ron Senungetuk Mark Shiner Richard Sourkes Joyce and Fred Sparling Pat Sparrer C. Spencer Sara Stasiuk Steinbrueck Native Gallery Tom Suber and Cary Griffin George Szabo Dr. Charles Haskell Tator E. Taubman Carol Thrun Emilie Tremblay Louise and James Vesper Brenda and Robert Watson Nicholas Wattson John Weber, in memory of Mary MacDonald

Labrador photographer and filmmaker Jennie Williams recently won Best Atlantic Short Documentary at the FIN Atlantic International Film Festival 2021 for her film Nalujuk Night (2021), which is currently being shown at film festivals throughout Canada. Featured in an IAQ Choice article in 2016, Williams’ work was subsequently included in Future Possible, an exhibition at The Rooms, St. John’s, NL, in 2019.

Most recently, IAQ readers have connected with her work in the Summer 2021 Feature titled “Intermural.”

Annette M. Boucher François Boucher Karen Bradfield Mary Lawrence Breinig David Burns Kevin Burns Dorothy Caldwell and William Woods Mary F. Campbell John Carr Jim and Cindy Carter Paul E. Cawein Mark Cheetham David S. Cherepacha Shelley Chochinov Cobalt Art Gallery Jeffrey Cobb, in memory of Justin Lyman Cobb III Madeleine Colaço Carol A. Cole Geraldine and Jeremy Cole Jill Coles Brian and Lauri Connell, in memory of Claud Borchardt Peter Coolican Donna Cowan Scott Cressman

Judy Wolf Gail Wylie and Dave Wright and five anonymous donors [one in the memory of Hans Bloem, 1 , 3 , 1 ] $100–$249 Lea Algar-Moscoe Ella Nathanael and Chris Alkiewicz, in memory of Janet Wallace Ley Reneltta Arluk, in honour of Carver Kalluk Kirby R. Armstrong Caroline Arpin Sue Asquith Catherine Badke H. Mary Balint Diane Biehl Cathy Black Bladholm Family, in memory of Terry Bladholm Marjorie Blankstein Molly Blyth Amanda Boetzkes Robbin Bond Anne Borchardt, in memory of Claus Borchardt

Charles and Arline Crockford Ruby Cruz Fred and Mary Cutler George Dark Gordon Davidson Catherine Dean Anne-Marie Delaunay-Danizio Rosemary Delli Zuani Wilfrid Denis Machelle Denison, in memory of Claus Borchardt Paulette Dennis Department of Unusual Certainties Emmanuelle A. Desrochers Margaret Dimond Leanne Di Monte Nadine Di Monte Chris Dos Santos Mathieu Doucette François Dumaine Melanie Egan Huw Eirug, Nunavut Film Development Corporation Leslie E. Eisenberg Valentin Erich Mihut, in the name of Orosz Kinga

LEFT

Jennie Williams’ first film, Nalujuk Night (2021), based on her photography series of the same name, premiered at the FIN Atlantic International Film Festival in 2021 and took home a win for Best Atlantic Short Documentary. The IAQ has been covering Williams’ work since 2016. © THE ARTIST

Inuit Art Quarterly

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Spring 2022

THANK YOU

I think the IAQ is important. It is really important for me, and many other artists, because I feel like it is such a great place for many artists from different places in the North or in the South to showcase their artwork. It is my favourite art magazine. If I’m doing a new project, I’m usually contacted [by the IAF] to share some of my work, like when I documented my life during COVID-19 through photography in 2021.”

JENNIE WILLIAMS

Leah Erickson, in honour of all Inuit artists Keith R. Evans QC Lynn Feasey Maegan Fidelino Robin Field Kashtin Fitzsimons Chun Fong Joana Fraga Sibyl Frei Ed Friedman Paula Frisch JoAnne and Richard Fuerst Glenn Gear Kik and Si Gilman Anik Glaude Dolores Luis Gmitter Voyages Carole Gobeil Travel Edward Goldstein Deborah D. Gordon Kristine Greenaway Jill Greenberg Jill Grief Jean Haalboom, in memory of Claus Paul Borchardt Lizzie Haines Tekla Harms Lisa R. Hartman

Clive Harvey Tatiana Harvey Sara Hassan, in memory of Sharif Maher Hassan Janet Heagle, in memory of Fritz Begeman K. E. Heller-McRoberts Heliographics Rick Hiebert, in honour of Renzo Fernandez’s 40th Birthday!

Charles Hilton – Sculptor Brittany Holliss Albert Holthuis David Homan Frederick Hooper Warren Howard Allan Hughes Mike Hurry Jacqueline Hynes, Ph.D. Noorlizan Ibrahim Susan A. Ivory, in memory of Melvin A. Ivory Jeannette Jackson-Thompson, in memory of Richard C. Thompson Drs. Laurence and Katherine Jacobs

Amy Jenkins Stephanie K. Kevin and Holly Kaminska, in memory of Claus Borchardt Els Kavanagh Anne Kearns Heather Keith Cathy Kirkpatrick Bryan Klein Lynne D. Klemmer Jo-Ann Kolmes Julie L’Heureux Larry and Joyce Lacroix Rebecca Lee Wynne and William Lee Huguette Le Gall Le Grand Élan Genevieve LeMoine, in honor of Meredith MacEachern Jamie Lewis Lexo Susan Lifton Joe and Sandra Lintz Daryl and Marilyn Logan Louise Logan Denis Longchamps Marion Lord

Bob Ludwig and Susan Baum Tanya Lukin-Linklater Peter Lyman Ann MacDonald Mike and Cindy MacMillan Catherine Madsen Samia Madwar, in honour of Hazar Shawaf Peter Malkin Jan Manson Michael Massie Irene Mazurkewich Michelle McGeough Brian McLeod Heather McNab Meesschaert-Verheyen Family Joanna Miazga Anna Rita Migliaccio Stephen Morris, in memory of Aqjangayuk Shaa Cathy Moser and Jeff Itzkow David L. Muir My Art Syndicate Nahanni and Morea Aliide Naylor, in memory of Lyyli Elliott Gary Nelson Lou Nelson

RIGHT

Jennie Williams had the opportunity, through the IAQ, to record her life during the pandemic through photography. This work, Untitled (2021), included in “Intermural,” was published in the IAQ’s Summer 2021 issue and showed audiences how her family has adapted to change. © THE ARTIST

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THANK YOU

Marie-Josée Therrien is an art historian and associate professor at OCAD University. Therrien has been a supporter of Inuit artists through the Inuit Art Foundation since early 2018 and directs her support to various IAF initiatives and programs throughout the year.

COURTESY MARIE-JOSÉE THERRIEN

Marina Oeler Dr. Robert Olson Douglas Palmerton Penny Pattinson Kate Permut Father Colin Peterson Mimi Philippe William Phillips André Picard, in support of creation and dreaming Richard and Annette Pivnick Steve Potocny and Anne Milochik David Pride Robert Procida David and Robin Procida Mickey Ranalli Sharlene Rankin Blaine Rapp, in memory of Helen Rapp Bayard D. Rea Dr. Timothy W. Reinig Bruce Rice Mark Rieger Marcia Rioux Anita Romaniuk Robert Rosenbaum Gabriel J. Rosenberg MD Simon Rosenblum The Ryan Family Judith Rycus Dr. Jinder Sall

Wally and Lenore Sapach Bruno Savoie James Schmidt Joanne Schmidt, in loving memory of Gail Schmidt Iris Schweiger Patricia Scott Jeffrey Seidman Jean Servizi Paul Shackel and Barbara Little Kerren Shalanski Mari Shantz Elika Shapiro Janet and Benjamin Shute Jr. Katrina Simmons, in memory of Claus Borchardt Scenery Slater Eleni Smolen Scott Snowden Gregory Sonek Yu Song Robert Stafford Clarence Stonefish Jacek Szulc Robert C. and Judith Toll Diana Trafford Roslyn Tunis Jack Vickery Garnet Ward Lowell Waxman Gord and Laurie Webster

Claude M. Weil, in honour of Jim Shirley Elka Weinstein Karen Westrell Scott White Mark and Margaret Whitley Amanda Whitney Michael Wiles Jayne Wilkinson Garland Austin Withers Robert A. Wolf Christopher Wood Daphne Wright Bea Zizlavsky and sixteen anonymous donors [one in memory of Claus Borchardt, 3 , 11 , 1 , 2 , 2 ] Up to $99 Ariell Ahearn-Ligham Susan Anthony Judy Archer Andrea Arnold Andrew and Lynn Barlow, in memory of Claus Borchardt John Barlow Pat Bavin Heather Belbin Beverly Biderman

Thank you to this special group of donors who have committed to creating impactful opportunities for artists and supporting Inuit art over the long term by pledging to give annually for years to come.

Inuit Art Quarterly

14

Kurt Biedermann Susanna Biro Seven Blond Vicki Boutin Bill Bradley Laurie Anne Brewer Fiona Buchan-Corey Jonathan Bursaw, in memory of John Maounis Jocelyn Bussieres Monica Bye Nilsen, love from Sápmi Canada Helps Rob Cowley and Harmonie May Dennis Crowley Patrick Davis Tovah Delmont Sharon Dembo Noelle DeSouza J. De Vincenzo Hilary Dickson Maegan Didden Krista Dieckamp Tracey Doherty, in memory of William Robert Mesher Kristin Dowell Mary Edwards Jane Ely Pat English David Feiglin Ian Ferrier

Eleanor Erickson Goring Family Foundation HMH Capital Corporation/Hugh Hall Joram Piatigorsky Herb and Cece Schreiber Foundation Craig Wilbanks and Monty Kehl

Spring 2022

THANK YOU

Inuit art is a part of my life in many different facets: as an art historian, a collector, through connections in my family and as an appreciator of contemporary art.

I donate to the Inuit Art Foundation because it is important to support artists and it is one of the best ways to do that. I know that the IAF directs funds to where it is needed most by providing programs such as the IAQ, which brings so much awareness to the contemporary art scene.”

MARIE-JOSÉE THERRIEN

Melanie Foubert Kathryn Fournier Pamela Fratti Alison Freebairn Frank Gielen Claire Gold Pernille Goodbrand Dara Gordon, in honour of Morgan and Richard Zigler whose lives are forever bound together by their love for and connection to the arts, education and the Arctic Birgitte Granofsky Susan C. Griswold Delan Hamasoor Kathryn Hanna Beatrice Hanson Alyson Hardwick, in honour of Delphine Shiwak Deanna Haycock, for Chloe Gust Elizabeth Hayes, in memory of Claus Borchardt Anna Hevesy Mark Hirschman David Hollenberg and Linda Bantel, in memory of John Maounis Anna Holmes George Hope

Andrew Hubbertz Moira Hudgin Elizabeth Hutchinson Jacobs Erika Janik Celina Jeffery Heather Jessiman Anne-Remy Jones Jeannette Jonker Anne Louise Kelly Peter Kovacik Gary and Susan Kurylo Gretchen Lawrie Teresa Leon Dingwell Anastasia Lintner Suzie MacMillian, in honour of Mom and Dad Sophie Mailloux Wendy and Michael Main Graham Mastersmith William Mather David and Maida Maxham Lindsay McCoubrey Patrick McLean Joanna P. McMann Golda and Martin Mendelsohn Mary Jane Mikkelsen Robert Muller Heather Murdock Suzanne Nash Susan Newlove

Paul Newman Lena Nicholls Marina Noack Rob Norquay Peter Noteboom Keitrah Oakley Carole Ouimet, in honour of Christa Ouimet Morna Paterson Katie Pearl Danica Pinteric Clodine Portugais Hélène Poulin Danielle Rand Isabelle Ranger Henriette Ricou Elizabeth Robinson Marilyn Robinson Henrietta Roi Enid Rokaw Katie Rosa Barry Rosenberg Mark Rostrup, dedicated to Paula and Paul Rostrup Richard and Yvonne Rothenberg Susan and Joseph Rountree Jonathan Rutchik and family Rasoul Salehi Genevieve Sartor Donna Saunders

Janet Savard Claude Schryer Kathryn Scott Doug Selley Uma Selvarajah Toni Skokovic Lisa Deanne Smith Jan Carol Houston Smith Ann Sprayregen Keisha Stefanska Horace Suffredini Take Two Software Jowi Taylor, Six String Nation Rebecca Taylor, on behalf of Krista Sarah Taylor Amy Thompson Bertha Thompson Kitty Thorne Karen Thorne-Stone Ian Trott Darlene Tymn Nancy Walkling, in memory of Frank Walkling Tiffany Wallace Jennifer White Dallas D. Young Jean Zazelenchuk and thirteen anonymous donors [one in honour of Barbara Wood, 4 , 1 , 1 , 1 ]

You can make the difference There are more than 13,000 Inuit artists working in Canada today. Many face barriers to making and showcasing their work, but all deserve the same opportunities other artists have for their voices to be heard and their work to be seen.

By giving to the IAF, you help artists working across Inuit Nunangat and beyond connect to opportunities, have platforms for their work to be seen and build their careers.

Celebrate the art you love and make a difference by donating today.

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5 WORKS

Breaking Dawn IAF staff celebrate the sun with these luminous works

OPPOSITE

Kenojuak Ashevak — The Woman Who Lives in the Sun 1960 Printmaker Lukta Qiatsuk Stonecut 49.5 × 65.4 cm REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION DORSET FINE ARTS COURTESY FIRST ARTS PHOTO DIETER HESSEL © THE ARTIST

2/

Peter Aliknak Banksland

Sliding in the Sun (1972)

1/

Jukke Rosing

Untitled (2015) Jette Bang i dialog is a stunning collection of portraits by Greenlandic artist Jukke Rosing. Contemplative and revitalizing, the series has a grounding effect, calling viewers to take pause and reflect. This photograph caught my attention with the subject’s calm, confident expression, spirited wind and soft, cool colours evoking anticipation for the return of the sun.

Jette Bang was a mid-twentieth century Danish photographer, renowned for

documenting Greenlandic life before its presumed dissolution—reminiscent of Edward Curtis’ attempt to capture North America’s “vanishing race” in his sepia-toned images. With a focus on relationships, Rosing echoes Bang’s tender approach and reminds us that Greenlandic culture is still here.

NADINE RYAN

My favourite part about Sliding in the Sun is Peter Aliknak Banksland’s (1928–1998) use of red. The colour gradation is unusual for the artist, who more often printed his images monochromatically. But here it serves to burnish the children’s heads and the hillside with the glow of the setting sun, fiery rays beaming into eight pairs of eyes. Outside of the V of lines that define the cleft of the hill, the surrounding landscape is all negative space. Banksland has given us the time of day, the quality of light, even the orientation of the hill with respect to the sun—all with just one extra colour.

JESSICA MACDONALD

Assistant Editor

Associate Editor

ABOVE

Peter Aliknak Banksland — Sliding in the Sun 1972 Stonecut 60.5 × 46 cm

ABOVE

Jukke Rosing — Untitled 2015 Digital photograph 50 × 70 cm

COURTESY NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION © THE ARTIST

© THE ARTIST

Inuit Art Quarterly

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Spring 2022

5 WORKS

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Kenojuak Ashevak

The Woman Who Lives in the Sun (1960) When looking up at the sun, are we simply looking at a celestial body—or is it something more? In this iconic stonecut print, Kenojuak Ashevak, CC, ON, RCA (1927–2013), depicts the sun in a radiant scarlet, conveying the sense of heat that we feel when basking in sunlight. In the centre is the smiling face of a woman, adorned with tunniit and sun rays

mimicking flowing locks of hair. This personification speaks to the spirit within everything that surrounds us in our existence. The sun is not merely a hot star suspended in our galaxy; it is a giver and sustainer of life. It is life.

LISA FRENETTE

Associate Editor

5/

Tony Anguhalluq

Light Green and Dark Yellow with Cracky Separate with Three Broken Rocks with Hills (2006) Rather than depicting the sun itself, Tony Anguhalluq has chosen to highlight the effect it has on the land—a favourite subject for the Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake), NU, artist. Anguhalluq’s landscape drawings document the constantly changing rhythms of the land, which are owed to the daily and annual cycles of the sun. In this work he captures sunlight’s ability to transform the landscape into a dazzling expanse of bright, beaming yellow set against a pink cotton-candy–hued sky. Since we can’t look directly into the sun, I’ll revel in this opportunity to bask in Anguhalluq’s golden hour on the tundra.

4/

Abraham Anghik Ruben

Beckoning the Skies (2010)

LEANNE INUARAK-DALL

Abraham Anghik Ruben, OC, who had great-grandparents who were shamans, often intertwines figures from Inuit and Norse legends to create new narratives that reveal historical touchstones shared by northern cultures. Beckoning the Skies, sculpted in warm Brazilian steatite, portrays a shamanistic ritual in which one figure carries a sun disc high above their head, while the other holds up a drum and mallet. A sense of purpose and hope flows through the tension in the shamans’ stretched bodies as Sedna and Ran, the Norse goddess of the sea, together guide the umiak safely through the waves.

Contributing Editor

LEFT

Abraham Anghik Ruben — Beckoning the Skies 2010 Brazilian steatite 82 × 74 × 23 cm COURTESY KIPLING GALLERY © THE ARTIST

COURTESY MARION SCOTT GALLERY © THE ARTIST

SUE CARTER

Deputy Editor Break Up

ABOVE

Tony Anguhalluq — Light Green and Dark Yellow with Cracky Separate with Three Broken Rocks with Hills 2006 Coloured pencil 30.4 × 22.9 cm

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CHOICE

Victor Ekootak River Fishing

by Jamesie Fournier

Inuit Art Quarterly

18

Spring 2022

CHOICE

The determination on the men’s faces complement the women in their amautiit, smiling with needle in hand. The iqaluit drying in the background accent the patchwork shelters to create a sense of home on the land.

My parents have a framed stonecut print depicting Inuit hunters holding three-pronged spears, called kakivait, while fishing the iqaluit (Arctic char) as they migrate upstream.

Strange dotted lines place the hunters below the horizon. Seeing this print as a child, I imagined the hunters were buried underground, fishing in Hades with their beautiful catches lining the river Styx.

This puzzled me. I adored fishing and the thought of an afterlife spent riverside, kakivak in hand, did not seem like eternity wasted, let alone punishment.

Several years later, I happened upon a documentary called Fishing at the Stone Weir (1967). In the film, Inuit wade thigh deep into ice-cold streams, piling rocks one atop the other, building not dams but walls of stone that allow the current to pass through and little else. Narrowing twists and turns divert the iqaluit to small pools where Inuit stand with kakivait raised. With lightning accuracy, the iqaluit are speared, retrieved and laced with bone and string before being tossed back into the river.

Between strikes, the hunters stand poised, needles between their teeth as their lines drift leadenly, iqaluit in tow.

After viewing the documentary I looked at my parents’ print and saw it anew: no more purgatorial chambers but stone walls guiding iqaluit to harvest. Depicted with such elegant simplicity, I could not appreciate what I was looking at until I understood what it was.

In this piece, the clashing perspectives try my eyes. The bird’s-eye view of the river contradicts the front-facing shoreline; the hunters stand relative to the shore and not the river, creating an offset sense of depth, which should be at odds with

itself yet impressively blends together. The determination on the men’s faces complement the women in their amautiit, smiling with needle in hand. The iqaluit drying in the background accent the patchwork shelters to create a sense of home on the land.

The print was created by Inuvialuk artist and carver Victor Ekootak (1916–1965), who, in 1961, helped found the Holman Eskimo Co-operative in Ulukhaktok, Inuvialuit Settlement Region, NT. Remarkably, Ekootak had a productive career in the short year between his introduction to printmaking and his passing in 1965.

Twelve of his prints were included in the 1965 and 1966 Holman Print Collections, including River Fishing (1966). A number of Ekootak’s prints were also published in Bob Cockney’s 1966 memoir I, Nuligak, the first Inuvialuk autobiography ever written.

Ekootak’s River Fishing holds a special place for me, guiding me towards an appreciation of the rich histories behind Inuit art.

When I look at it now, I am drawn to the onlookers who sit riverside, wishing they could participate. I stand on the opposite shore and mirror the yearning in their eyes.

— An Inuk raised in Denendeh, Jamesie Fournier lives in Thebacha/Fort Smith between Salt River First Nation, Smith’s Landing First Nation and the South Slave Métis Nation. His brother, Zebede Tulugaq Evaluardjuk-Fournier, illustrated his last two projects with the IAQ. He was guest author at the 2018 and 2020 Northwords Writers Festival and a runner-up for the 2018 Sally Manning Award.

OPPOSITE

Victor Ekootak — River Fishing 1966 Stonecut 47 × 60.6 cm COURTESY WAG–QAUMAJUQ PHOTO ERNEST MAYER © THE ARTIST

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CHOICE

Joseph Angatajuak Bird

by Tenille K. Campbell

Inuit Art Quarterly

20

Spring 2022

CHOICE

Even though I have been working with poetry, storytelling and photography for the past decade, I often hesitate to call myself an artist. Like many out there, I have felt the term artist was for someone other than me— someone fancier, with more polish. I didn’t feel connected to much artwork; I didn’t see myself reflected the few times I sauntered through galleries and exhibitions, sipping on a latte, desperately wishing I knew what I was supposed to feel as I looked at art that carried no connection to me and my art.

But that feeling of disconnection has recently changed. At the start of this year, I visited the exhibition Atautchikun | wâhkôtamowin, currently hosted at the Remai Modern in Saskatoon, SK, within Treaty Six Territory. With support from Tarah Hogue, the show was guest curated by Missy LeBlanc and Kablusiak with a focus on pushing against narratives of authenticity and assumptions about what defines Inuit art. The show also engaged with local artists in Treaty Six to create connections between the North and the Prairies, cultivating a space of kinship and story between two vastly different lands.

As an artist who was invited to participate in the show, I was very interested in seeing how my work stood in relation with everyone else. I perused the exhibition,

opening my own mind to the art of the North.

Indigenous exhibitions always make me feel more welcome in the usually unapproachable settings of gallery spaces. I was able to take my time, challenge my own stereotypes of what I considered Inuit art and allow myself to be pushed out of my comfort zone. Growing up, I wasn’t exposed to much Inuit art, aside from the steatite and ivory carvings you can find everywhere, and that is the internal image that has stuck with me.

As I pushed through the gallery, I kept coming up against art forms I had never considered Inuit art—even things like sketching and painting—and it was humbling how I had obviously set my own parameters of what Inuit art could be.

As I stepped further into the hall, I saw it: this amusing sculpture by Joseph Angatajuak (1935–1976). It made me laugh out loud with joy and recognition. Created in 1967, the terracotta figure was by far the biggest piece in the section. A soft orange glow became something of a beacon against the soft serpentinite and steatite forms below the figure. Round and fat, it stood out. Simply titled Bird, this piece struck me as unique, different, thick and with no hope of blending in. My laughter echoed in the quiet space.

As a person with a plus-sized body, the way I move through this world is always

noted, and while it’s not something I think about every day, in that moment, I felt seen. I love that this artist’s piece gave me such a reaction, a moment of connection.

Was the figure meant to be funny? Was it meant to inspire joy and recognition? Was this soft-bodied bird meant to send me down a spiral of reflection on fatphobia in Indigenous cultures, of colonialism and control of women’s bodies?

That’s the power of art, I’m learning.

You must be open to it, to be uncomfortable with it. To let it take you where you need to go. I still think about this fat bird. When I’m walking down a wintery street his image will occasionally pop into my mind. Standing so tall and proud, belly out, eyes watchful.

When I think of this soft and boisterous bird, I’m reminded that some things are just meant to stand out.

— Tenille K. Campbell is a Dene/Métis author and photographer from English River First Nation, SK. She completed her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and is enrolled in her PhD at the University of Saskatchewan. She is also the artist behind sweetmoon photography and the co-creator of tea&bannock. She currently resides in Saskatoon, SK.

OPPOSITE

Joseph Angatajuak — Bird 1967 Terracotta 24.9 × 20.9 × 16.6 cm COURTESY THE MENDEL ART GALLERY COLLECTION AT REMAI MODERN © THE ARTIST

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Front

Parr, Untitled (7 Geese, 4 People, 2 Dogs) Price Realized: $5,280

Lucy Qinnuayuak, Large Bear Price Realized: $11,210

Norval Morrisseau, Untitled (Moose Pair) Price Realized: $35,400

Online Sale of Inuit and First Nations Art Bidding Open: March 8th to 22nd View and Bid Online at CowleyAbbott.ca Cowley Abbott is currently viewing artwork for inclusion in future auctions of Inuit and First Nations Art. Contact us for a complimentary, confidential and no-obligation consultation.

We offer standard all-inclusive selling commissions.

326 DUNDAS STREET WEST TORONTO ONTARIO VALUATIONS@COWLEYABBOTT.CA 1.866.931.8415

Artist Nathan Eugene Carson in his Studio, Hamilton, ON Photography: Dane Cutcliffe

Elevating the art community who enrich and inspire us all.

RBC is a long standing supporter of the visual arts and deeply values the role of artists as innovators within their communities.

Visit rbc.com/visualart to learn more

® / ™ Trademark(s) of Royal Bank of Canada. RBC and Royal Bank are registered trademarks of Royal Bank of Canada. VPS109299

127424 (11/2021)

ARTISTS’ CORNER

Championing artistic and cultural self-determination through all-Inuit juries The Inuit Art Foundation is proud to support an Inuit-specific adjudication process for grants, scholarships and awards. How does an Inuit-specific jury shape how artists and art forms are selected for funding and what is the impact on artists?

I have been on a number of art juries in the past but supporting all-Inuit juries is an especially rewarding experience for me. At the beginning of my career 25 years ago, it wasn’t even a topic of discussion that one day Inuit could be the sole voices in decisions about art grants and awards.

This is truly an historic milestone that I am grateful to be a part of.”

HEATHER CAMPBELL STRATEGIC INITIATIVES DIRECTOR, INUIT ART FOUNDATION

COUZYN VAN HEUVELEN 2021 KENOJUAK ASHEVAK MEMORIAL AWARD SHORTLIST

“I make work for my family, my community. And so [the KAMA 2021 jury, these] are the people! They’re people who care about Inuit art— who are Inuit. To have them look at my work and to be recognized in this way is huge. It feels great to do well in the art world, but it’s more important, I think, to do well in your own community.”

Inuit Art Quarterly

ABOVE

Couzyn van Heuvelen — Nets 2018 Aluminum, fencing, floats, Rubbermaid tote and concrete Dimensions variable COURTESY FAZAKAS GALLERY © THE ARTIST

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Spring 2022

ARTISTS’ CORNER

OSSIE MICHELIN 2021 KENOJUAK ASHEVAK MEMORIAL AWARD JUROR

JOCELYN PIIRAINEN 2021 KENOJUAK ASHEVAK MEMORIAL AWARD JUROR

“It was great to be invited as a juror for [the 2021] Kenojuak Ashevak Memorial Award— especially participating on an all-Inuit jury.

It was important that Inuit were making these decisions for such an award! During the decision-making process, we also made notes of encouragement for those who did not quite make the cut and recommended applying for this award the next time around. I look forward to seeing this award grow in the coming years!”

“I’ve served on many juries before but this was my first time being part of an all-Inuit jury. Even though we all came from different regions and had different connections with art, there was an instant familiarity and connection. We wanted the winners to reflect the complexities and subtleties of the Inuit world through their art. It was very refreshing to be part of this process knowing that as a jury we were coming at it from the same place.”

CHANTELLE EVANS 2022 INDIGENOUS VISUAL ARTS MATERIALS GRANT JURY

NAKASUK ALARIAQ 2022 INDIGENOUS VISUAL ARTS MATERIALS GRANT JURY

“It was such a privilege to participate on the Inuit Art Foundation’s first all-Inuit IVAM jury and to be able to support artists in their creative endeavours through this grant program for urban-located Inuit. It is great to be part of the change to help Inuit artists become heard and seen.”

“I felt that each member of the jury, because they were also Inuit, were able to give opinions on each application based on their knowledge of art and personal experience. Speaking openly, acknowledging the challenges that Inuit artists face and discussing it in a safe space was so fulfilling.”

LAAKKULUK WILLIAMSON BATHORY 2021 KENOJUAK ASHEVAK MEMORIAL AWARD JUROR

“It is important, supportive and uplifting that the IAF has made a concerted effort to focus on Inuit working for Inuit, Inuit art for Inuit, Inuit speaking to one another. My experience of participating on the all-Inuit jury for the Kenojuak Ashevak Memorial Award was exciting. It meant that we were collaborating as peers and for the betterment of our own people. It was also a humbling experience, doing this work with the spirit of Kenojuak Ashevak in our midst.”

EMILY LAURENT HENDERSON 2022 INDIGENOUS VISUAL ARTS MATERIALS GRANT JURY

“Being a part of an all-Inuit jury was an opportunity not only to explore the incredible work of the artists, but also to engage in conversations about the process, and how it can be made even better and more relevant for future applicants. It was an honour to be trusted with the selection and to take part in this collaborative experience.”

2021 Kenojuak Ashevak Memorial Award Jury

2022 Indigenous Visual Arts Materials Grant Jury

Jocelyn Piirainen is an urban Inuk artist and curator originally from Iqaluktuuttiaq (Cambridge Bay), NU. She is the Associate Curator of Inuit Art at the Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq, where she has curated a number of exhibitions, most recently Inuk Style.

Nakasuk Alariaq is an Inuk-Finnish Canadian raised in Sikusiilaq (Kinngait/Cape Dorset), NU. Her writing and curating shares Inuit histories from a local Inuk’s perspective and has been featured in Inuit Art Quarterly, Canadian Art, the Textile Museum of Canada and others.

Ossie Michelin is an award-winning Inuk journalist, photographer and filmmaker from the community of North West River, NL. He has worked as a journalist for more than 10 years reporting on Indigenous news from coast to coast to coast.

Chantelle Evans is a textile artist and arts administrator from Makkovik, Nunatsiavut, NL. Her work has been included in exhibitions and projects including SakKijâjuk: Art and Craft from Nunatsiavut and the 2019 Canada Goose campaign for Project Atigi.

Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory is a Kalaaleq performance artist, poet, actor, curator, storyteller and writer, and a fierce advocate for Inuit artists. Williamson Bathory was also the inaugural winner of the Kenojuak Ashevak Memorial Award in 2018.

Emily Laurent Henderson is a Kalaaleq and settler writer, arts administrator and community organizer based in Toronto, ON, and co-founder of Tkaronto Plant Life. Her work has been featured in Inuit Art Quarterly, C Magazine, Studio Magazine and others.

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PROFILE

Aedan Uviluq Corey

BELOW

Aedan Uviluq Corey — Tattooing Myself 2020 Digital photograph ALL © THE ARTIST

by Kavelina Torres

Art lives inside of Aedan Uviluq Corey. Art that is synergistic, moving and at the same time gentle, resilient and ever enduring.

The art of storytelling came early to Uviluq. At the age of two they created a song that moved their parents to tears. As an older child they turned to writing short stories that later coalesced into poetry, which they continue to this day, as well as digital illustration.

As with many Inuit of a certain age, Uviluq was not born in Nunavut but down south, in Edmonton, AB. They grew up in Iqaluktuuttiaq (Cambridge Bay), NU, spent summers with their grandparents living the traditional life and, as a child, spoke Nattilingmiutut and Qikiqtaaluup nigiani almost exclusively. This has given them a sense of grounding that, coupled with their own innate sense of art, blossomed into something that made them whole.

Uviluq makes art for the soul by tattooing traditional lines called kakiniit (body tattoos—excluding the face) and tunniit Inuit Art Quarterly

(exclusively face tattoos). They had their first kakiniit completed in 2016 through the Inuit Tattoo Revitalization Project in their home community. From that point, Uviluq unquestionably wanted to bestow kakiniit and tunniit to fellow Inuit. As they received their tunniit by Zorga Qaunaq in 2020, Uviluq was taught how to create and render traditional tattoos.

To Uviluq, tattooing is an act of defiance and rebellion against the colonial system. Each piece they complete is a gift of bodily sovereignty, confidence and reclamation. “My tattooing is returning home to myself,” says Uviluq. They applied their own tunniit, and when they finished, Uviluq explains, “It felt like it was supposed to be there.”

Uviluq says, “Tattooing takes a lot of emotion out of you because it’s emotional work.” However, they don’t feel that this emotional work is something to capitalize on, so instead Uviluq 26

Spring 2022

PROFILE

ABOVE (LEFT)

Olayok’s Tunniit 2021 Digital photograph ABOVE (RIGHT)

Eva's Kakiniit 2021 Digital photograph LEFT

Tears are Prayers 2021 Digital illustration

uses a bartering system. The recipient gifts Uviluq something— sometimes it’s country food, sometimes it’s a pair of earrings— according to the weight and importance of the work and the impact it has on the person.

Intertwined with their tattoo practice is their love of poetry, as both art forms come from the heart. Poetry allows them to sit within a moment and experience the feelings of it. Uviluq elaborates that they “have to be emotional and feel okay about that.”

Their book, Inuujunga: I Am Alive (2020), is a treatise of wonderment and hard truths—steady, observant and fraught with emotion. It is truly a book to keep and reread. They are now working on their second poetry collection of 60 poems entitled Kinaavit: Who Are You? As Uviluq explores who they are as a tattoo artist, poet and graphic artist, they continue to reveal and express different aspects of themself.

Break Up

— Kavelina Torres is a Yup'ik and Inupiaq Inuk from Alaska. Their writing speaks to Indigenous futurisms, snow and female body protagonists, northern Indigenous Peoples in science fiction, horror and daily life.

Torres is published in fiction and has directed and written in film and theatre. They teach scripting, directing and previsualization and preproduction for filmmaking and theatre. Torres graduated from the University of Alaska Fairbanks with a BA in Indigenous Filmmaking and from the University of British Columbia with an MFA in Creative Writing.

This Profile was made possible through support from the RBC Emerging Artists Project.

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BIENNALE D’ART CONTEMPORAIN AUTOCHTONE | CONTEMPORARY NATIVE ART BIENNIAL

6th edition Tiohtià:ke | Mooniyang (Montreal) Ktinékétolékouac (Sherbrooke) Kebec (Quebec City) Canada www.baca.ca Starting April 28, 2022 Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke Art Mûr La Maison des Jésuites de Sillery Stewart Hall Art Gallery Quai 5160 La Guilde Musée McCord

Duane Isaac, Land/Body, 2020

Satellite Exhibitions daphne art centre Galerie Laroche/Joncas She:kon - BACA space for emerging art

PHOTO: @zeituntravels PHOTO: Lindsay Reid

Curated by

Presented by

HEATHER IGLOLIORTE ASINNAJAQ KRISTA ULUJUK ZAWADSKI KABLUSIAK

Extended until FEBRUARY 2023 100 works of art by 90 artists—from the 1940s to the present—including commissioned works and loans from across Canada, Alaska and Greenland.

WINNIPEG ART GALLERY—QAUMAJUQ 300 Memorial Blvd. Winnipeg MB Canada wag.ca

Audio Guide Partner

spring thaw — Translated by Elizabeth Qulaut

Returning to the environments they captured in the Winter 2021 issue of the IAQ, Freeze Up, four photographers explore the impact of the spring thaw on their landscape. Capturing the dynamic shift in lighting and colour that springtime brings to nature, the photographers capture the new possibilities that thawing ice offers to navigate and use their space.

— Inuktituuliqtitaujuq uumunga Elizabeth Qulaut

Utiqpalliallutik nunamut ajjiliurivaktut ukiumit 2021-mit takuksaulauqtut tavvani IAQ-mit, sikuvallialiqtillugu, tisamaujut ajjiliurijiit qaujinasukpaktut upirngaakkut aukpallialiqtillugu qanuq nunanga takuksauniqasuungungmangaat. Ajjiliurivaktut qaumaninganit taqsanginniglu upirngaakkut silamit piliraangat, ajjiliurijiit qajinasukpaktut qanuippangninganit aput auliraanga.

upirngaamit aukpallialiqtillugu

Holly Andersen Makkovik, Nunatsiavut, NL Day by day you feel the temperature start to warm up.

The days are longer, and the sun feels so good on your skin. Seals even start to come up on the ice to sunbathe, peppering the ice before it melts away into the ocean.

Springtime is definitely a favourite season on the Labrador coast, as we try to squeeze in some ice fishing before the snow and ice melt away.

— Holly Andersen is a photographer from Makkovik, Nunatsiavut, NL, whose practice explores photography’s ability to capture minute details and preserve moments in time.

Ukiaksaanguliraangat sila niglasukpallialisuunguvuq.

Inuillu paurngaqtarialisuungullutik niglalualaungittillugu. Umiallu nunamuaqtauvallialiqLutik kisianili upirngaanguqpat atuqtaukkannirniarmata. Isumavakkivugut niglasuliraangat ikkinguninganit sikunguqtitiniariaksaq. Taimali ukiut ilanginnit apiluaqtillugu suli niglasuluangitillugu sikunguqtitivalaungimat. Ajjiliulauqsimajara Februariutillugu sila niglasulualaungimmat ammalu sikungurunnattialaungittuq. Isumajungali silarjuaq asijjiqpallianinganut taimannasugijara, ukiukkut sikunguqsimanngiluaqLuni ajurutaulisuungungmat angunasuktiujunut, aulaqattaqtunnullu nunalingnut asinginnut ajurutauvakkilluni ammalu qijuksanik avvuriaksaq ajurnarutauvakkilluni.

— Holly Andersen ajjiliurijiujuq Makkovikmit, Nunatsiavummit, Newfoundlandmit, ajjiliurivaktuq qanuq ajjiliurutiit ajjiliurijunnarmangaata takuvalliajanginnit.

Holly Andersen — The Uncertainty of the Seasons 2021 Digital photograph

Holly Andersen — Nalunaqtuq sila asijjiqpalialiqtillugut 2021 Qaritajakkut ajjiliuqtausimajuq

© THE ARTIST

© HANAUJAQTI

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Niore Iqalukjuak Kangiqtugaapik, NU

I know people, particularly tourists, want to come here, but it’s probably best seen in the spring. Every time I get to this place, even though I’ve been there already, I see something different.

It’s pretty amazing to get different views of it. Not long ago we even passed by that area right when a polar bear was there.

One day I hope to go in early fall, when we can see the northern lights, and do a long-exposure photo. Once the ice has thawed, it’s challenging to access this place—it gets pretty wavy. We try to take a couple days to come here when it’s very calm.

— Niore Iqalukjuak is a photographer, hunter and community leader from Kangiqtugaapik (Clyde River), NU, whose practice focuses on documenting vibrant community scenes and arctic landscapes.

Tanna ajjiliuqsimajuq Qikiqtaaluup nigiqpasianit, Ikpiarjuup qanigijaanit Brodeur Peninsulamit. Qallunaatitut tamanna taijauvaktuq Gallery, kisianili Inuktitut taijauvaktuq Qarlinguaq.

Piujualuk tamanna nuna, ajjiungiLunilu, taimaittumik takulauqsimangittugut. Ungasiktumiittuq, ikarranik pingasunik tisamanikluunniit sikituukkut upaktaujunnaqtuq Ikpiarjungmit.

Ilaannikkut tamaungaqpaktunga ajjiliurijumallunga , ilaannikut angunasukLuta tamaungaqpngmijugut-angunasukviuvaktuq tamanna nuna. Ukiukkut sikujaraangat imaq tamaungaqpaktugut angunasugiaqLuta; kisiani tamanna sikusimttiaraangat taimali sikusimattiaraangat attanaqattangittuq. Taimali tamaani qagligaangama tamaungarasukpaktunga ajjiliurijumallunga.

— Niore Iqalukjuak ajjiliurijiujuq, angunasuktiullunilu ammalu nunalianit sivuliqtiulluni Kangiqtugaapikmit, Nunavutmit, ajjiliurivaktuq nunalinganit ammalu ukiuqtaqtuup nunanganit.

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Niore Iqalukjuak — Untitled 2020 Digital photograph

Niore Iqalukjuak — Taijausimangittuq 2020 Qaritajakkut ajjiliuqtausimajuq

© THE ARTIST

© HANAUJAQTI

Spring Thaw

Laisa Audlaluk-Watsko Aujuittuq, NU

This was a windy June day. The sun is 24 hours a day at this time of year—this was taken around the same time as the picture from the fall, at about eight o’clock in the evening. My husband and I parked with the other Ski-Doos and machines left behind on the ice by harvesters, hunters and campers. What caught my eye was the wind, it was maybe 50 or 60 kilometres per hour, and the clouds were moving pretty fast. Overnight the ice started to widen the leads, making hurdles to cross. That’s when we knew we weren’t going anywhere to hunt and just had to wait for the ice to break up for the next season, boating time.

— Laisa Audlaluk-Watsko is a photographer, textile artist and performer from Aujuittuq (Grise Fjord), NU, whose photographic practice often explores the tension between life on the land and 9-to-5 office subsistence.

Anuraaqtillugu Junemit, maannaujuq ikarranik 24-nik siqiniq takuksausuunguvuq-taanna ajjiliuqtaulauqpuq taisumanitut ukiaksaamit ajjiliuqtautillugu, unnukkut 8-muaqtillugu.

Uigalu uvaguk sikituuvut tamaungalauqtavut qimakLutigut tamakkutitunaq sikituutut qimaktaujutitut sikumit tamakkununga angunasuktinut amma aullaaqsimajutitut, qaujililauqpunga tamani anurimit, tamaaniqai 50-mit uvvaluunniit 60-mit anuri sukkaniqalauqpuq ikarramit atausirmit, tamakkualu nuvujait sukkajualuulutik. Unnuanguqpat sikuvallianialiqtuq.

Qaujimalilauqpugut namungaujunnaillilluta angunasugiaqLuta ammalu utaqqituinaliqLuta kisiani siku auliqpat arragu, umiaqturluta ammalu qilalugarnik angunasukluta, takuksautitilutalu Aujuitumiuqatittinnut, Nunavummit.

— Laisa Audlaluk-Watsko ajjiliurijiujuq, takuksautitisuungujuq sanajamik qallunaqtaanik kisutuinnarnik sanavaktanginnik, ammalu imminik takuksautittiluni Aujuitumiutaqatiminut, Nunavumit, ajjiliuqtangillu takuksauniqasuungullutik inuit illiqqusituqanginnik ammalu ullumiujuq 9-mit 5-mut sanavaktut iliqqusiriliqtanginnik.

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Laisa Audlaluk-Watsko — Upirngaaq 2021 Digital photograph

Laisa Audlaluk-Watsko — Upirngaaq 2021 Qaritajakkut ajjiliuqtausimajuq

© THE ARTIST

© HANAUJAQTI

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Katherine Takpannie

Lac Johnston, QC I was transfixed by that little shed when I took this image. I was almost in a daydream-like state. It was a beautiful summer day, and I was on the dock bathing in the sun. I was enjoying being in nature, and it was just so beautiful I couldn’t stop staring in that direction.

There’s renewal in the springtime, when life comes back to everything again. We wake up from the darkness, it becomes lighter and we start seeing more colour. I loved that view from the dock—I didn’t mean to come back months later and shoot the exact same thing, but both days it was just so beautiful.

— Katherine Takpannie is a photographer based in Ottawa, ON, whose work captures performative and political gestures as well as intimate portraits of women.

Tavvaniitillunga igluralaarmit kamammarilauqpunga ajjiliuqtannik. Suurlu sinnaktumallunga. Aujakkut kajjarnammariktillugu, tamaanilu tulaktarvingmit siqinirlu uqquttiaqtillugu. Quviasummarilauqpunga nunmiiLunga, ammalu piummarikLuni nuna tautuinnarumattialauqtara nuna. Arraagutamat upirngaakkut taimaisuungujuq, inuusirlu pigiakkanniqpakLuni. Iqqummasuungujugut taaqtumiilauqLuta, qaummakpakLuni ammalu takuvallialiqLuta taqsanik. Tamanna piugimmariktara tamaaniLunga tulaktarvingmittamaungaqpangikkaluaqtunga taqqit amisut qaangiraangata ammalu tamatumingatuaq ajjiliurivangittunga, kisianili aksualuk piusivangmat.

— Katherine Takpannie ajjiliurijiujuq Ottawamiutaulluni, Ontiarijamit, ajjiliuqtangit takujausimaniqasuungubut suurlu pilirittiaqsimaniqaqLutik ammalu arnait ajjiliuqpakkillunigit.

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Katherine Takpannie — Untitled 2016 Digital photograph

Katherine Takpannie — Taijaujjutiqangittuq 2016 Qaritajakkut ajjiliuqtausimajuq

© THE ARTIST

© HANAUJAQTI

Spring Thaw

FUCKIN AROUN With Inuit Art —

by Billy-Ray Belcourt

NG ND

Billy-Ray Belcourt, in conversation with Kablusiak, dismantles the way we are pushed to perceive Inuit art. The two powerhouse Indigenous artists discuss how colonial conceptions of Inuit art are broken down using camp and silliness as subversive artistic tools, because how can one politicize Garfield the cat sitting on an iglu?

In a phone interview, Kablusiak, the Calgary-based multidisciplinary Inuvialuk artist and curator, tells me wryly that Garfield sitting in an iglu (inspired by Agnes Topiak’s “Sleeping Family” 1970) (2021), a Sharpie drawing on handmade paper, should compel a viewer to ask, “How is this Garfield drawing an act of resistance?”1 They ask this not as an invitation to contort the work to satisfy a political objective, but instead to question the way notions of Indigenous art as inescapably political limit possibilities for emotional engagement.

What exactly is desired from Indigenous art? There’s the anthropological frame in which Indigenous art is perceived as evidence of an incompatibility with modernity. Kablusiak tells me that this view especially coloured their adolescent understandings of Inuit art. Then there’s the newer phenomenon, in the wake of the national project of reconciliation, in which expressions of Indigenous suffering are made public and seen as necessary to establishing Indigenous Peoples as emotional subjects and to shatter the barrier of historical ignorance. Both can result in a further entrenching of white subjectivity. That is, in the cruel imaginations of settlers, our status as the injured and their status as the bearers of the world solidifies. The knowledge of our pain, situated in the past and made abstract, becomes necessary to the construction of the present-day Canadian as someone who can still lay claim to the future. But there’s another dimension that Kablusiak’s work brings into view for me, which is the idea that Indigenous art needs to express some quantifiable political value or have a larger mission of consciousness raising. A risk inherent to all of the above is that colonialism becomes the axis around which our work orbits, which Kablusiak argues can entice us to think ourselves into “a relationship with colonialism [we don’t actually] have.” That we were or are traumatized becomes the basis for our claims to political and aesthetic authority in the eyes of settler audiences. Trauma tailgates us like dust. “We’re older than colonialism, we’re older than Canada,” Kablusiak says.

Kablusiak works with the minor aesthetic categories of the politically ambivalent, the absurd and the relatable in order to subvert the normative desire that Indigenous art solidifies a connection between Indigenous trauma and political action.

Cultural theorist Sianne Ngai argues that the aesthetic categories associated with the domestic or mundane are imbued with a sense

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of political ambivalence and therefore deemed trivial. Triviality, Ngai says, “is not itself trivial,” but instead proof of the fact that “less rarified” and “less intense” aesthetic experiences “crop up everywhere.”2 The politically ambivalent seems an especially useful stance for countering the long-standing anthropological drive to solidify the contours of Indigenous existence, to sculpt us into static objects of total comprehension. Kablusiak’s political ambivalence is much like Ann Cvetkovich’s, scholar of feminist and queer theory, and her collaborator Karin Michalski, in that it indicates a disinterest in dominant forms of social action to bring about meaningful change. Political ambivalence indicates a disinterest in dominant forms of social change to bring something like freedom into being. It is not a refusal of politics but instead a way of performing the political that escapes easy analytical containment and makes use of tools not conventionally understood as methods of critique.

Political ambivalence lends itself to those who purposely make art that has elements of, say, the silly or sexy, rather than participate in forms of collectivity based on woundedness or marginalization.

Kablusiak’s ethos of political ambivalence is best captured in their own words: “I like to fuck around with my art.” This notion is key, I think, to appreciating the aesthetic intervention that Kablusiak’s work amounts to. One isn’t allegiant or subservient to a grand proposition or deep seriousness but open to play, surprise, humour and even sadness, which seem much more descriptive of Indigenous life as it is lived day to day. Relatability is an important artistic principle because it makes the sites of artistic engagement more accessible. It is also not about endeavouring to extract some kind of hidden meaning in a text or artwork but rather experiencing it as an embodied and affective knowledge. We see this in a range of Kablusiak’s works, including the felt pieces Looking at Facebook (2019) and Bringing in Groceries (2019), which reveal how the domestic is a realm of visual significance and where our senses of self, individual and collective cohere. The effect isn’t a politicizing of the ordinary; it is the production of a sense of communality and intersubjectivity. Together we produce a way of life.

Kablusiak’s series of ghost portraits also express ambivalence as a social form. Ghosts are ambivalent figures par excellence; they straddle the boundary between the real and the invented, the past

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PREVIOUS

Kablusiak — Piliutiyara (Robin Hood) 2020 Archival digital print from faded positive slide film 61 × 91.4 cm COURTESY NORBERG HALL ALL © THE ARTIST

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Garfield sitting in an Iglu (inspired by Agnes Topiak's “Sleeping Family” 1970) 2021 Ink on handmade paper 20.3 × 25.4 cm COURTESY NORBERG HALL

BELOW

Felt Kitties 2020 Felt and embroidery floss 14.5 × 14.5 cm COURTESY DAVID DYMENT

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and the present and, because of this, question what we consider a subject of politics or what we consider important for an Indigenous knowledge project. About the series, Kablusiak says, “If your narrative is too closed it doesn’t carry meaning as strongly to a wider audience.

This [series] is very specific to me as a non-binary, Inuk, queer person who grew up primarily down south feeling sad and making ghost pictures [about] it. There’s a balance [to it]; this is just a picture of a person wearing a ghost costume in downtown Calgary. You can place yourself [in it] and project onto it as you feel.” The photographs allow for a kind of sad commons, a shared geography of sadness that nonetheless retains a specific rendering of queer Inuk diaspora.

Relatability and ambivalence thus do not eliminate autobiographical particularity; they permit a multitude of autobiographies such that we understand ourselves and one another with more emotional clarity. Wanting to see ourselves in art isn’t a political failure. It is a minor fortune when art caresses us and holds our ambiguous selves.

Kablusiak’s untitled 2016 series of Sharpie drawings likewise is about how, in the words of Cvetkovich and Michalski, from their experimental film The Alphabet of Feeling Bad (2012), it is “possible to share the feeling of being alone or lonely as a way to make new forms of collectivity.”3 The drawings bear phrases like “I want to scream” and “My body is too heavy” and “Nobody liked my selfie”— all phrases that reveal the emotional truth of the absurdity of living in a colonial system.

Later works such as their steatite sculptures of condoms, butt plugs and Sharpies and the abovementioned Garfield drawings more explicitly harness the power of absurdity and camp in imagining and enacting possibilities for Indigenous art outside the scope of the anthropological. Susan Sontag teaches us that camp is a love of “the unnatural, of artifice and exaggeration”4 and has a tenuous relation to politics. (Sontag goes so far as to say it is depoliticized but

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OPPOSITE (TOP)

Kablusiak — Dildo 2019 Steatite 32.2 × 4.4 × 8.3 cm ALL COURTESY NORBERG HALL ALL © THE ARTIST

OPPOSITE (BOTTOM)

Looking at Facebook 2019 Felt, thread and fabric glue 20.3 × 27.9 cm ABOVE

Boot Lake Road (akunnirun kuupak) 2018 Archival pigment print 81.3 × 121.9 cm

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PREVIOUS

Kablusiak — Atiga Agnak, 2018, 2-channel video.

Installation view of the Sobey Art Award Exhibition, Art Gallery of Alberta, 2019 COURTESY ART GALLERY OF ALBERTA PHOTO CHARLES COUSINS ALL © THE ARTIST

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Installation view of the Sobey Art Award Exhibition, Art Gallery of Alberta, 2019 COURTESY ART GALLERY OF ALBERTA PHOTO CHARLES COUSINS

OPPOSITE

Furby Ookpik 2021 Rabbit fur, felt, fibre fill and embroidery floss 14 × 14.6 × 11.4 cm COURTESY NORBERG HALL

NOTES

I’d argue that is more accurately politically ambivalent.) Camp is an indictment of the natural, of the way it flattens aesthetic experience and forecloses pleasure and joy. Kablusiak’s version of camp veers slightly in that it takes up the absurdity of the colonial condition and our coping mechanisms for weathering it as Indigenous Peoples.

“If I’m going to be sad about colonialism and make art about it,” they tell me, “I either want it to be so fucking ridiculous that it sets people off or have it open enough that people can relate to it.

The installation that I did at [the Toronto art gallery] YYZ was about my family’s experience with Residential Schools and it was an installation that [was about] trauma tourism and working through trauma with absurdity. So this installation was a mixture of ‘This is fucking awful…’ and ‘I want to laugh but I don’t want people to see that I’m laughing.’”

To laugh about trauma is continuous with the spirit of fucking around with art. It isn’t a further pathologizing of our pain; rather, I think it affirms a part of our collective self that exceeds the boundaries of the pain. Here, Kablusiak avows their interest in upending settler expectations and Indigenous aesthetics generally. The country has for the last few decades been encouraged to tour through our trauma

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1

All quotes from Kablusiak, interview with Billy-Ray Belcourt, December 2021.

2

Sianne Ngai, “Our Aesthetic Categories,” PMLA 125, no. 4 (2010): 948–58.

3

Karin Michalski, dir. The Alphabet of Feeling Bad, 2012.

4

Susan Sontag, “Notes on ‘Camp,’” Partisan Review 31, no. 4 (Fall 1964): 515–30.

and feel good about it—be freed by it. This is the problem in making Indigenous cultural expressions into a form of social work. As theorist Glen Coulthard put it, we are made into objects of repair, not subjects of history and politics capable of seeing ourselves beyond a grammar of despair and deficiency. Kablusiak’s art is a radical insistence that we can fuck around, that we don’t always have to be serious, that we can instead be serious about our silliness and sadness and desire for some kind of catharsis that isn’t mediated by the state. Our feelings can be private as well as public, as ambiguous as a ghost in downtown Calgary or as specific as a steatite sex toy. No singular emotional lens can account for our futurity and indomitability. We can be as indecipherable as we wish.

— Billy-Ray Belcourt is a writer and academic from the Driftpile Cree Nation. He is an Assistant Professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of British Columbia. A 2018 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar, he earned his PhD in English at the University of Alberta. He was also a 2016 Rhodes Scholar and holds an M.St. in Women's Studies from the University of Oxford and Wadham College.

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A P PA R I T I O N S —

by Emily Laurent Henderson

—

by Emily Laurent Henderson

Exposure of Inuit art at Expo ’67

The iconic Inuit art that graced Expo ’67 and how it shaped perceptions of Inuit art and artists, both then and now.

OPPOSITE

View of the walkway leading to the Katimavik of the Canada Pavilion, Expo ’67, Montréal, QC, 1967 COURTESY CANADIAN CENTRE FOR ARCHITECTURE GIFT OF MAY CUTLER

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Mural by Kumukluk Saggiak and Elijah Pootoogook at Expo ’67’s Canada Pavilion La Toundra Restaurant COURTESY NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA © THE ARTISTS

In 1967, marking the first century of Confederation, or creation of the Canadian nation-state, the young country was given a unique opportunity to define their identity on the world’s stage. Canada invited millions of visitors over a six-month period to Montreal for the 1967 International and Universal Exposition, or Expo ’67 as it was commonly known. Expo ’67 effectively introduced much of the world to not only Montreal but the multitude of cultural expressions held by the nation under the theme “Man and His World.” It also marked a moment in time in which Indigenous art was introduced to a new market through landmark exhibitions such as the Indians of Canada Pavilion and the now iconic Inuit art installation immortalized in Aki’name (On the Wall), a National Film Board of Canada 1968 documentary by David Millar.

Inuit art, language and aesthetics played an integral role in much of the fair’s branding. Of the architecture that defined Expo ’67, the towering, inverted glass pyramid of Katimavik (the gathering place) dominated the landscape of Montreal’s Notre Dame Island, and the ever-popular ookpik owl, created by Kuujjuaq-based Jeannie Snowball (1906–2002), figured prominently as the official mascot of the event. Even cuisine was highlighted throughout the event at the popular restaurant La Toundra, where an “Inuit Cocktail” was featured as part of the “Katimavik Special” meal, drawing inspiration from the North that was largely inaccessible to most visitors of Expo ’67 and to many Canadians. Also on the menu was

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mattak and char, all served up in a sumptuous setting that a 1967 Star Weekly article described as a space “where guests sit on seal-hide upholstery in a room decorated with [Inuit] tapestries and carvings.”1 Coupled with the use of Inuit artwork on promotional posters and materials, Expo ’67 helped to cement Inuit art as a uniquely Canadian export in the minds of collectors around the world.

Although the fruit of the artists’ labours were viewed by millions, few knew of what they experienced in order to bring their work to life.

The artists behind the Inuit art installation displayed in the Canada Pavilion, Kumukluk Saggiak (1940–2020) and Elijah Pootoogook, stayed in the suburbs of Montreal with host families during the production of the project, where they were introduced to life in the South for the very first time as they worked to share their artistic vision with 50.3 million visitors.

Saggiak and Pootoogook created a spectacular mural carved in plaster that depicted daily life in their home community of Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, complete with scenes of time on the land spent hunting and fishing, as well as life in town, which Inuit had only begun to settle into over the preceding decade. For most visitors, this was their first introduction and glimpse into Inuit art and life. Calling to mind enormous printmaking plates, the intricately detailed mural captured everything from the fine elements of Inuit textiles, such as the pattern of a sealskin parka and the structure of a sturdy pair of kamiks, to the variety of tools necessary for sustaining life in the North.

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Aki’name (On the Wall) follows the experiences of Saggiak and Pootoogook as they navigate suburban life with their families, often with a significant language barrier. Narrated primarily by an English-speaking voiceover describing Saggiak’s perspectives and observations, the film follows the artists as they encounter everything from adjusting to the trees that block the horizon to an implied lack of clarity around how long they would be expected to stay in the South, and away from home, to work on the project.

“I can’t speak with my host in Montreal, so I don’t always know what I’m expected to do,” Saggiak explained, “I don’t know if I’m yet to do more carvings, or if my work is almost over.”2 The mural was not the only contribution by Inuit artists to Expo ’67; the short-lived, but iconic printed textiles from Kinngait Studios also made an appearance at the fair. Entered in Canada’s Design ’67 competition, the silkscreen-printed fabrics were one of just 58 submissions out of 2,400 from across Canada to receive an Exceptional New Design Award. However, where the textiles were actually displayed during Expo ’67 has been poorly documented and can only be inferred through archival photographs. While it was possible they were intended for display at one of the fair’s pavilions, we do know they were featured as part of the staging decoration in at least one of the Habitat ’67 model suites. While the textiles program ultimately proved too cost ineffective to continue, their legacy lives on as many of the fabrics were recently displayed at the Textile Museum of Canada in Toronto, ON, as part of the exhibition ᖃᓪᓗᓈᖅᑕᐃᑦ ᓯᑯᓯᓛᕐᒥᑦ Printed Textiles from Kinngait Studios.

Today, contemporary Inuit artists continue to be cognizant of the impacts of Expo ’67 on not only their work but the perception of their work, as well as the politics around world fairs and expos— as tools for nation building and the establishment of national identities on the global stage. Contemporary Inuk painter Megan Kyak-Monteith reflects on these dynamics in the Inuit Art Quarterly’s Venice Biennale Special Issue in 2019, following her trip to the Venice Biennale (an international art fair) to be present for the opening of Isuma Film Collective’s installation at the Canada Pavilion.

In her article “Iglulik at the Centre,” she draws connections back to Expo ’67, writing, “notably, Inuit were the only Indigenous peoples to be included in the Pavilion, deliberately connecting Inuit culture and identity with the nation at the height of the Cold War following the relocation of Inuit families further north the decade prior as the federal government became increasingly concerned with Arctic sovereignty.”3 As Inuit increasingly self-represent in global art fairs, not only through the creation of artwork but also through curation and criticisms, there is a constant awareness of a power dynamic: a past that absorbed Inuit creative output and visual and cultural identities into those of the nation. Now, more than five decades beyond this pivotal, complex and high-profile moment in Canada’s history, the legacy of Expo ’67 maintains a powerful influence on global perceptions of Inuit art. As Inuit art has expanded into a plethora of new media, such as fashion, digital art, metalwork, animation and more, the prints and carvings made famous during the era of Expo ’67 have continued to capture the imaginations of collectors and enthusiasts around the world and inform the innovative work of the next generation of Inuit artists, while simultaneously providing a foil for reflection on how far we have come.

ABOVE

Carving by Kumukluk Saggiak and Elijah Pootoogook at Expo ’67’s Canada Pavilion La Toundra Restaurant COURTESY NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA © THE ARTISTS

BOTTOM

Jeannie Snowball — Ookpik: Canadian Good Luck Creature tag 1963 Cardboard 10.2 × 6.5 cm COURTESY NEW JERSEY STATE MUSEUM © THE ARTIST

— Emily Laurent Henderson is a Kalaaleq (South Greenlandic Inuk) and settler writer, arts administrator and community organizer based in Toronto. A University of British Columbia 2020 graduate with a BA in Anthropology, Henderson is also an active member within the Indigenous community in Toronto, and formerly served on the Board of Directors for Toronto Inuit Association and is a co-founder of the Indigenous community gardening and food sovereignty grassroots organization, Tkaronto Plant Life. Henderson’s work has been featured in the Inuit Art Quarterly, C Magazine and Studio Magazine, along with textual and audio contributions to ImagineNATIVE Film Festival and WAG-Qaumajuq.

NOTES 1

Isobel Ledingham, “Eating exotically and otherwise at EXPO,” The Star Weekly, February 11, 1967, pp. 33–35.

2

David Millar, dir. Aki’name (On the Wall). 1968.

The National Film Board of Canada, https://www.nfb.ca/film/aki_name/

3

Megan Kyak-Monteith, “Iglulik at the Centre: Isuma at the Canada Pavilion,” Inuit Art Quarterly 32, no. 5 (2019): pp. 43–46.

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Canadian-owned and operated since 1987

Canadian High Arctic . Northwest Passage . Newfoundland & Labrador . Gulf of Saint Lawrence

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Celebrating 50 years of Arctic Co-operatives Limited Incorporated in 1972, Arctic Co-operatives Limited was established with a vision for its Members to be able to coordinate their resources, consolidate their purchasing power and provide operational and technical support to independent community-based businesses throughout the Arctic. Fifty years on, the goals and approach remain the same—support community capacity, strengthen local economies and build a thriving and prosperous member-driven network across the North.

Today, 32 community-based Co-operative businesses owned and controlled

by Inuit, First Nations and Métis communities are located in Nunavut, Northwest Territories and the Yukon. For five decades, Arctic Co-operatives Limited has been guided by the principle of “one member, one vote.” In celebration of this important legacy and the exciting future ahead, we asked a few Member artists about the impact of Arctic Co-operatives Limited on their work, careers and communities.

“We appreciate Arctic Co-operatives and the Co-op in our community—they have always been there for me and for my family. I was 11 years old when I made my first carving. It was a narwhal and I was very happy to bring it to the Co-op. I would like to thank the Co-op for supporting me, my community and my art.

I’m very grateful.”

PAUL MALIKI ARTIST, IGLOOLIK CO-OP LTD.

“The qulliq represents the Co-op and the people around it represent the community. Without the Co-op, the community would be dark and the people would be very unhappy.

Here the qulliq is lit. The future—our future as a community—is bright.”

JACO ISHULUTAQ ARTIST, PANGNIRTUNG ESKIMO CO-OP LTD.

LEFT

Jaco Ishulutaq — People of the Community 2021 Steatite, caribou antler and sinew 30.5 × 45.7 × 50.8 cm COMMISSIONED BY ARCTIC CO-OPERATIVES LIMITED © THE ARTIST

OPPOSITE

Mary Okheena — Journey 2021 Stencil 55.9 × 76.2 cm COMMISSIONED BY ARCTIC CO-OPERATIVES LIMITED © THE ARTIST

SPONSORED

“The dog team plays a vital role in the Inuit culture. Lead dog has a great role, but cannot do it alone, as it depends on his team. The logo design represents Arctic Co-operatives coming together, working together with the Co-ops to reach that one common goal. To be strong and successful.”

DANNY AALUK ARTIST, QIKIQTAQ CO-OP ASSOC. LTD.

“This is a stylization of a beadwork pattern from my family, my auntie Alice Frost’s design. Dog teams are a traditional mode of transport and traditionally we honoured that by sewing beautiful regalia for our family and dogs. Coming from a long line of dog runners myself, I wanted to showcase something that is distinctly northern Indigenous to honour Arctic Co-operatives’ 50th anniversary.”

JENEEN FREI NJOOTLI ARTIST, OLD CROW CO-OP LTD.

“In the old days, we put inuksuit in areas for meeting and hunting. Those inuksuit were built to stand for years. The Co-op is like an Inuksuk, it stands strong and is always there for the people and the community. This print represents the old days, when we travelled by dog team in the night, under the moon and northern lights.”

MARY OKHEENA ARTIST, HOLMAN ESKIMO CO-OP LTD.

About the artists Danny Aaluk is a graphic artist from Uqsuqtuuq (Gjoa Haven), NU, where he is still based today.

Aaluk is most well known for his “drum” drawings, whereby he redefines the meaning of a stretched canvas by drawing directly on the skin of traditional Inuit drums.

Jeneen Frei Njootli is a 2SQ Vuntut Gwitchin artist with Czech and Dutch ancestry whose award-winning practice takes the forms of performance, sound, textiles, images, collaboration, workshops and feral scholarship.

Jaco Ishulutaq is one of the most well known and prolific artists working in Panniqtuuq (Pangnirtung), NU, today. A skilled sculptor in antler, ivory, whalebone and stone, Ishulutaq was awarded the Nunavut Commissioners’ Arts Award in 2018 in recognition of his contribution to the visual arts of Nunavut.

Mary Okheena is a prominent multidisciplinary artist based in Ulukhaktok, Inuvialuit Settlement Region, NT, who primarily works in graphic art but also creates wallhangings and embroidered works. Across each medium, Okheena’s work is characterized by playful visual narratives, which include both human and animal figures.

Paul Maliki is a celebrated sculptor, highly sought after for his depictions of arctic wildlife. Based in Naujaat (Repulse Bay), NU, Maliki is a self-taught artist whose work is heavily influenced by his work as a hunter. His work can be found in private and public collections across North America and around the world.

YOUR TRUSTED ONLINE ART GALLERY FOR AUTHENTIC FIRST NATIONS AND INUIT ART PRINTS AND ORIGINALS

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Tim Pitsiulak Spring Duck Hunting (2013)

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Qavavau Manumie

www.feheleyfinearts.com gallery@feheleyfinearts.com 65 George Street, Toronto

Spring 2022

416 323 1373

Qavavau Manumie, LOST TOOLS ON MELTING ICE, 2013 coloured pencil & ink, 21 5/8 x 49 5/8 in.

CONTEMPORARY & HISTORIC 606 VIEW STREET VIC TORIA, B.C. 250 380 4660

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AXJANGAJUK SHAA - HUNTER RIDING CARIBOU 22 X 6 X 10 INCHES -SERPENTINE

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TRIBUTE

Levi Alasua Pirti Smith

by Janice Grey

Take a second to think about what “art” means. Why do we consume art? Why do we create it and why do we talk about it? Do artists have to explain their art to make it valuable? And do we need to understand something to visually appreciate it?

Renowned sculptor Levi Alasua Pirti Smith (1927–1986) was part of the last generation in Nunavik to be raised on the land.

He was born in Kekertauyak (Cape Smith), a settlement just north of Puvirnituq, Nunavik, QC, on the Hudson Coast. He took the surname Smith to differentiate himself from others who shared his given name. A prolific artist, Smith worked at his craft for many years.

Unlike many men of his generation, Smith spent more time carving than hunting or fishing once the family was established in Puvirnituq. He began carving at the tender age of 11, and is said to have started with large, roughly finished sculptures before polishing his skills and developing his unique abstract style. He became well known for his transformational pieces, carved with minimal clean lines that still manage to evoke big feelings.

The settlement of Kekertauyak, where the artist spent most of his life, was eventually abandoned when several residents were found to have tuberculosis and sent away to hospitals in southern Quebec and Ontario. Smith was among those sent south for Inuit Art Quarterly

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TRIBUTE treatment, and after spending a year in hospital, he moved to Puvirnituq where he settled with his wife, Bertha Ajappatu Pirti.

Bertha—or Parsa, as she was also known—was as recognized and respected a sculptor as her husband. They had four children together and both made livings from their practices.

Smith was known for his unsettling style. In a 1974 feature that appeared in North Magazine, Salluit sculptor Kopak Tayara says of Smith’s work, “To me, this is frightening. When I look at a carving like that, I feel fear.”1 Take the work Transformation (n.d.), for example, carved in the sleek black stone endemic to the Puvirnituq area. A monstrous being crouches menacingly and bares his many teeth. Considering the deep, chilling eyes of the transforming creature, it’s easy to understand why Smith’s sculptures could be seen as frightening.

When asked about the meaning behind his art, the artist described his figures as masculine, malevolent spirits who are threatening to people.2 Yet, when pressed further, Smith said simply, “They don’t mean anything.” A response that gives the impression that he made art for the simple joy of creating without attachment to meaning. Of course, it put food on the table, but even then, sculpting was not the only way to make a living.

A quick search online proves that Smith’s work—held in collections at the Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq in Manitoba, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and Musée de la civilisation in Quebec City, among others—has withstood the test of time. It also continues to be popular with collectors all over the world. It seems audiences have not been as spooked by his fantastical creations as Tayara, and Smith’s creations—as ambiguous, indecipherable and open ended as they are—endure precisely for his unwillingness to assign them fixed meanings. In the end, it may be that art doesn’t have to mean anything at all.

NOTES

— Janice Grey was born in Kuujjuaq, Nunavik, QC, and raised in Aupaluk, Nunavik, QC. She has been involved with community co-operatives for over a decade. Since completing the Nunavut Sivuniksavut program, Grey has been active in politics at both regional and local levels. She currently lives in Aupaluk with her partner and their three dogs, Loki, Brownie and Jory. Harvesting, preparing and eating traditional Inuit foods are her passion.

1

North Magazine, March/April 1974, 35.

2

Ibid.

OPPOSITE (ABOVE)

Levi Alasua Pirti Smith — Untitled 1969 Stone and steatite 6.5 × 14.5 × 2.5 cm COURTESY AVATAQ CULTURAL INSTITUTE PHOTO ÉRIC FERLAND ALL ARTWORKS © THE ARTIST

OPPOSITE (BELOW)

Untitled 1969 Stone and steatite 9.5 × 9 × 7.5 cm COURTESY AVATAQ CULTURAL INSTITUTE PHOTO ÉRIC FERLAND

ABOVE

Transformation n.d.

Stone 34.9 × 41.9 × 21.6 cm COURTESY WADDINGTON’S AUCTIONEERS AND APPRAISERS, TORONTO

LEFT

Levi Alasua Pirti Smith sells his sculpture at the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1955 © PETER MURDOCH, FÉDÉRATION DES COOPÉRATIVES DU NOUVEAU-QUÉBEC AND AVATAQ CULTURAL INSTITUTE

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CURATORIAL NOTES

ᓴᓇᓐᖑᐊᓂᑎᒍᑦ ᒪᑭᑕᖃᑎᒌᓐᓂᖅ

Sanannguanitigut Makitaqatigiinniq Standing Together Through Art Debout ensemble à travers l’art

BELOW

Ulivia Uviluk — Sanannguanitigut Makitaqatigiinniq 2021 Embroidered beadwork on felt 10 × 15 cm COURTESY AVATAQ CULTURAL INSTITUTE PHOTO FRÉDÉRIC LAPORTE © THE ARTIST

MARCH 2022–MARCH 2023 NUNAVIKSTTA.COM

by Olivia Thomassie

ᓴᓇᓐᖑᐊᓂᑎᒍᑦ ᒪᑭᑕᖃᑎᒌᓐᓂᖅ/ Sanannguanitigut Makitaqatigiinniq /

workers to improve health outcomes and community wellness.

Artist Mary Paningajak Alaku had been invited to create illustrations for the program. Then the pandemic shut everything down. Still, the Atautsikut team wanted to invite Mary and other artists to make illustrations—or anything arts related—about the pandemic.

I was initially involved in the Atautsikut project as an artist (under the name Ulivia Uviluk), but when the pandemic disrupted their plans and they had the idea to expand it in a new direction, I told Janique about what Avataq envisioned: a virtual project where we could bring together Inuit artists from Nunavik making different types of masks in response to COVID-19. Quickly, we made the choice to merge the two projects together—to invite artists to make art pieces related to how they felt during the pandemic.

In November 2020 we released a call for artists, and the artists have been working on their pieces independently since then.

Some of the participating artists were up north and others down

Standing Together Through Art / Debout ensemble à travers l’art is an online exhibition that brings together 12 Inuit artists—among them Pasa Mangiok, Akinasi Partridge, Maggie Napartuk, Niap and more— whose work bears witness to the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic among Nunavimmiut who reside in both Nunavik and outside the region. It is curated by Janique Johnson-Lafleur and myself.

Sanannguanitigut Makitaqatigiinniq evolved from two separate ideas, one from the Avataq Cultural Institute, where I am a programs officer, and the other from a project Janique collaborates with, called Atautsikut.

Atautsikut is a community of practice project that supports Inuit and non-Inuit workers involved in youth mental health and wellness in Nunavik, including community workers, nurses, doctors, social workers, rehab workers and other practitioners.

The overall goal of this project is to encourage collaboration among Inuit Art Quarterly

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CURATORIAL NOTES

south; we weren’t able to gather, so we checked in with the artists virtually and one by one they contacted us when they finished.

This exhibition features very diverse reactions to COVID-19, and it’s touching how all of the artists interpreted the project differently. Their stories, both about the processes of creating the work and the artworks themselves, are very heartfelt. One of the artists, Kili-Ann Desrosiers, is a mother and she was pregnant at the time. She was able to spend her time in quarantine involving her young son in this artistic project.

Some of the artists made work about the social issues that were happening during that time—the Black Lives Matter movement, Joyce Echaquan, the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and the unmarked graves that have been found on Residential School sites across Canada. Some of the other artists felt the need to express their own mental states during lockdown.

The virtual exhibition website pairs the works they made with their stories through text as well as video.

One artist, Hannah Tooktoo, recently returned to Kuujjuaq, Nunavik, QC, after finishing her visual arts degree at Dawson College in Montreal, QC. She explained how when the pandemic started, everybody felt the urge to be productive, but she was overwhelmed by that idea, because everything was shut down. For her, it felt like it was time to breathe and not focus on productivity.

Other artists said the opposite—that they were finally able to create during lockdown.

Robert (Robbie) Watt made a piece called Covid Dance (2021), full of characters with scared expressions on their faces. That piece

ABOVE

RIGHT

Mary Paningajak Alaku — Coop 2021 Ink 20 × 26 cm

Robert (Robbie) Watt — Covid Dance 2021 Felt and embroidery floss 184 × 48 cm

COURTESY AVATAQ CULTURAL INSTITUTE PHOTO FRÉDÉRIC LAPORTE © THE ARTIST

COURTESY AVATAQ CULTURAL INSTITUTE PHOTO FRÉDÉRIC LAPORTE © THE ARTIST

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CURATORIAL NOTES

RIGHT

Hannah Tooktoo — Braided Sisters 2021 Acrylic on canvas 50 × 30 cm COURTESY AVATAQ CULTURAL INSTITUTE PHOTO NICOLAS LIGETT © THE ARTIST

is about that COVID dance—the tension between taking measures to stay safe and being worried about everything, but still needing to live your life.

Mary Paningajak Alaku created two drawings for the exhibition that reflect on how COVID-19 has changed the whole world, even the tiny communities of Nunavik that are so far away from everyone.

Coop (2021) shows people lining up in a co-op wearing masks, and all the same spacing habits that we had in the South imposed in tiny northern communities, too. We can even see the signs about COVID-19 precautions in Inuktitut on the wall! I feel representation like that is very important. To me, this piece feels like being seen.

Since the start of the pandemic, I’ve been stuck down south but wanting to be up north. I’ve been watching the communities in Nunavik undergoing all these changes from the pandemic, but remotely instead.

Inuit Art Quarterly

The pandemic has caused such a sustained and challenging feeling of disconnection for people. For me, hearing the participating artists talking about how they have been feeling during this time— their creative inspirations, their fears, the changes to their everyday lives—it makes me feel less alone. Although it’s unlikely we’ll be able to bring these artworks and artists together for a physical exhibition, Janique and myself are excited for audiences around the world to find a little connection and a little less loneliness of their own through this project.

— Olivia Thomassie is a young artist and activist who works at Avataq Cultural Institute as a program agent to support Nunavik artists.

She makes beaded pieces and has directed three films with the Wapikoni Mobile.

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HELPING HANDS

30 YEARS AT KINNGAIT STUDIOS Curated by Nakasuk Alariaq In partnership with Inuit Futures Featuring works from a major donation from William B. Ritchie

February 19 – June 5, 2022 Shuvinai Ashoona. Tribute (2009). Lithograph on paper (p.p.).

William B. Ritchie Collection, The Rooms.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts

“Protective Mother Bear” Arctic marble, African wonderstone Manasie Akpaliapik, 2021 14.0” x 7.5” x 14.5”

Specializing in Inuit Art since 1963

Owl and Young by Pootoogook Qiatsuk, Cape Dorset.

REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION DORSET FINE ARTS © THE ARTIST

Visit us online: · Consignments · Expert Appraisals · Collecting Inuit Art

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83 Sparks St. Mall • Ottawa, ON snowgoose.ca | 613-232-2213 | info@snowgoose.ca

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NEWS

Updates and highlights from the world of Inuit art and culture

BOTTOM (LEFT)

Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory — Nannuppuggut! (still) 2021 Polar bear skin, wood frame, elasticated rope and projected video 2 min

TOP

Governor General Mary Simon speaks at Annie Pootoogook Park naming ceremony in Ottawa, 2021 PHOTO KATHERINE TAKPANNIE

PHOTO NATIONAL GALLERY OF CANADA © THE ARTIST

Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory Wins the Sobey Art Award

Heather Igloliorte Awarded Royal Canadian Academy of Arts Medal

Kalaaleq artist Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory has been named winner of the 2021 Sobey Art Award. The multidisciplinary artist, poet, curator and uaajeerneq (Greenlandic mask dance) performer is the second Inuk to win the prestigious $100,000 prize in its 20-year history, following Annie Pootoogook in 2006.

The announcement was made on November 6 at an in-person ceremony at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, ON. Williamson Bathory came up on stage, laughing with infectious delight, before turning serious, asking those present to quietly make eye contact with each other and to remember not just their own children, but “the thousands and thousands of Indigenous children buried in all the homelands all over this country.” She continued, “We have to hold these children inside us, always and forever. To me, this is our art...”

When asked by the IAQ following the event whether she had any projects that the award would help facilitate, Williamson Bathory said, “What I’ve really been able to show to my family, the community and even the arts in general is that I’m able to provide for my family as an artist. And it should be a viable option for everybody.

I am very proud that I’m able to raise my two children as healthy and strong individuals by making art.”

On November 27, the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA) awarded Dr. Heather Igloliorte the RCA Medal. The RCA Medal is awarded annually in recognition of significant contributions by individuals in the field of arts and culture. The ceremony was held online via Zoom.

“I was surprised and very honoured to hear I would be receiving this medal, and I am so grateful to the members of the RCA for this recognition,” says Igloliorte of the win. “I think it speaks to the appreciation of the impact that Inuit are having across all aspects of the arts today. The art world is taking notice of how we are collectively steering the conversation on, and [in the] direction of, our own artistic practices.”

Igloliorte is an Inuk scholar, independent curator and art historian from Nunatsiavut.

She is an Associate Professor and University Research Chair at Concordia University in Montreal, QC. In addition to her roles at Concordia, Igloliorte is current President of the Board of Directors at the Inuit Art Foundation and Director of the Inuit Futures in Arts Leadership: The Pilimmaksarniq / Pijariuqsarniq Project, which aims to empower the next generation of Inuit leaders in the arts through hands-on training and mentorship.

Ottawa Park Officially Named After Annie Pootoogook

Want More Inuit Art News?

Read Norma Dunning’s interview on winning the Governor General’s Literary Award Tanya Tagaq’s new album and other Inuit art events you won’t want to miss in 2022 PHOTO REBECCA WOOD

The newly named Annie Pootoogook Park was officially unveiled in honour of the late artist Annie Pootoogook in Ottawa, ON. The park, which is located in the Sandy Hill neighbourhood, was filled with approximately 200 people to witness the park-naming ceremony and plaque unveiling. The celebration coincided with International Inuit Day on November 7.

The ceremony was hosted by Rideau-Vanier Councillor Mathieu Fleury, who emphasized the importance of this moment for the Inuit community.

Governor General Mary Simon was in attendance and gave a speech in honour of Pootoogook’s legacy, highlighting her personal connections to the artist’s work.

Other memorable moments included a recorded speech from Nunavut Premier Joe Savikataaq, a drumming performance

by Sheena Akoomalik and her family as well as a throat-singing performance by Annie Aningmiuq and Kendra Tagoona.

The crowd of onlookers included members of Pootoogook’s family and others who knew and loved Pootoogook or were impacted by the artist in some way. For members of Pootoogook’s family that live in Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, the event was live streamed.

Get all the news, faster at: inuitartfoundation.org/news Inuit Art Quarterly

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Wholesaling Inuit art since 1967

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A woman transforming into a bird

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LAST LOOK

Janet Nungnik Global Warming

For all its wavy lines and fantastical imagery, Global Warming (2019) reads like a map—a compass pointing north radiates out of the centre, with a subtle X following the ordinal directions out to the edges of the felt. The map’s border is denoted by highly textured white, yellow and green landmasses that ring the wallhanging.

This map’s legend, however, is not a glossary of symbols but rather two figures the Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake), NU, textile artist Janet Nungnik has superimposed on top. The figure in orange dances as concentric rings of thread form a sunny yellow drum. Below, two blue hands reach out of the negative space to cross the land, as if to protect it—from the beating rays of the sun, or from the noise of the drum? The other figure watches, wearing a white amauti decorated with an image of planet Earth. Nungnik’s tiny stitches, attaching the white applique to the felt, mirror the lines of trim on real amautiit. In the figure’s right hand is a bucket labelled “NEWS.” There’s a sense of urgency in this wallhanging, an imminence that is at odds with both the slow, methodical way a sewer must stitch it together and the slow, steady progression of global warming. Even for an artist as proficient as Nungnik, this piece would have taken hours to construct, every detail requiring thought and a further expenditure of time and energy. From the swirling orange current in the water to the white dots just below the compass, each component is part of the map of how climate change is transforming the Arctic.

JESSICA MACDONALD

Associate Editor

Janet Nungnik — Global Warming 2019 Wool felt, embroidery floss and beads 69.9 × 70.5 cm COURTESY MARION SCOTT GALLERY © THE ARTIST

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Matthew Kirk

A North American Art Collection amplifying diverse voices and creating conversations.

Image Credit: Matthew Kirk (Navajo), The Tallest Tree, 2021, Hand cut tar paper, acid-free paper, wire mesh, acrylic, oil, cotton, brass grommets, blue tacks, staples, wire, TD Bank Corporate Art Collection.

Learn more at td.com/art.

Visit the TD Gallery of Indigenous Art at 79 Wellington St. West in Toronto. ® The TD logo and other TD trademarks are the property of the Toronto-Domion Bank or its subsidiaries.