Inuit Art Quarterly - Anniversary: Celebrating 30 Years

IN THIS ISSUE:

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ᐃᓄᖕᓂᖔᖅᑐᑦ ᐃᓄᐃᑦ ᓴᓇᖕᖑᐊᖅᓯᒪᔭᑦ ᐊᒻᒪᓗ ᑕᐅᑦᑐᖏᓐᓂᑦ Inuknigaaqtut Inuit Sanaguaqsimajangit ammalu Tautunnginit Contemporary Inuit Art & Perspectives

Anniversary

Celebrating 30 Years

Jessie Oonark Uncovering the Archive — 30 Artists to Know Then and Now — Tim Pitsiulak What Lies Beneath

LET'S BUILD A NUNAVUT PERFORMING ARTS CENTRE!

Qaggiavuut, a non-profit Nunavut pe!orming a"s society, invites you to be our pa"ner in an historic event : Nunavut is the only territory/province without a pe!orming a"s centre Stories and music provide children with a sense of belonging Inuit stories, songs, dances and drums were banned during colonization and are being reclaimed by Inuit a"ists The pe!orming a"s are the most eective way of securing a language at risk

We need a space for Inuit performers to create, build skills and present their art.

For more information on how to help us: www.qaggiavuut.com

CONTENTS

30.3

Inuit Art Quarterly Anniversary

Front

Features

5 COVERS

Where We Go From Here: Four Generations and the New Arctic Reality More than 50 years out from the first Arctic artistic naissance, a leading artist argues that we are again at the start of sweeping change for Inuit art. Here, he reflects on what is needed to forge a new path.

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Inuit Art Quarterly at 30

by Abraham Anghik Ruben

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A sneak peek at some current and upcoming exhibitions and projects

4 Contributors 5 From the Editor 8 President’s Message 8 Foundation Update

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HIGHLIGHTS

CHOICE

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Annie Pootoogook

by Elizabeth Logue CHOICE

20 Lizzie Ittinuar

by Rebecca Huxtable PROFILE

22 Since the beginning, the IAQ has

been fortunate to have the dedicated and ongoing support of our readers.

In this piece, a small selection of thirtyyear subscribers share what the magazine, the art and the artists mean to them.

64 Tim Pitsiulak: Stories of What Lies Beneath

A curator and friend reflects on the unique vision and immense legacy of the late Kinngait artist in this moving personal essay. Exploratory, dense and layered, this feature mimics the rich visual language of Pitsiulak’s indelible aesthetic.

by Andrew Hunter

70 Celebrating 30 Years of Supporting Inuit Artists

Reflecting on its thirty-year history, the Inuit Art Foundation has compiled some of its most memorable and important events in a lushly illustrated timeline, with many never-before-seen photographs of artists drawn from our archive.

by Alysa Procida

BELOW

Page 27 Our exclusive guide will brighten your home with Inuit art

Special Section 27 Collecting Guide

The IAQ is pleased to present this guide on collecting. With contributions from dealers, collectors and experts, this handy reference serves as the ideal entry to buying and living with Inuit art.

Inuit Art Quarterly

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CONTENTS

“Immersing the prospective artist in classical training will enable them to develop skills and new ways of viewing their cultural, material and spiritual traditions.”

ABRAHAM ANGHIK RUBEN PAGE 54

Features

Back TRIBUTE

132 Victoria Mamnguqsualuk Tukiki Manumie Jack Nuviyak Miriam Qiyuk Thomas Webster CURATORIAL NOTES

134 Picturing Arctic Modernity: North Baffin Drawings from 1964

A curator traces the collaborative process involved in bringing to light an iconic and dynamic collection of drawings from Kangiqtugaapik, Mittimatalik and Ikpiarjuk.

by Norman Vorano REVIEW

140 Canadian and Indigenous Art: 1968 to Present National Gallery of Canada

by Lindsay Nixon 78 Authentically Inuit

As early as the mid-1950s, counterfeits of Inuit art made their way to Canadian shores. The response? The Igloo Tag Trademark. Now, for the first time, the mark will be managed by Inuit, for Inuit.

by Leslie Boyd

82 Flashback: Jessie Oonark

Though made by one of Qamani’tuaq’s most iconic artists, a cache of her drawings were nearly forgotten for half a century. This feature traces their journey from a small hamlet to a publishing company in New York and back to Canadian soil.

by Sarah Milroy 96

30 Artists to Know We asked 15 leading figures in Inuit art to nominate an early-career artist to watch. In turn, those artists selected a senior talent who has inspired them. The result is an expansive portfolio exploring the intergenerational, familial and community-based bonds that are made visible through art.

ABOVE

Page 82 Jessie Oonark’s repatriated drawings

Anniversary

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REVIEW

142 Viva Arte Viva

57th Venice Biennale

by Carla Taunton REVIEW

144 documenta 14

Athens, Greece / Kassel, Germany

by Zoë Heyn-Jones

146 News LAST LOOK

148 Jessie Oonark

ON THE COVER

Jessie Oonark (1906–1985 Qamani’tuaq) — Untitled (Joyful Man) (detail) c. 1967 Felt-tip pen 27.9 × 45.7 cm

Front

MASTHEAD

CONTRIBUTORS

PUBLISHER

EDITORIAL

Abraham Anghik Ruben

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

Executive Director and Publisher Alysa Procida

Abraham Anghik Ruben, OC, is a sculptor, born near Paulatuk, Inuvialuit Settlement Region, NT, currently residing in Salt Spring Island, BC. A graduate of the Native Art Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Anghik Ruben’s work is characterized by its imaginative storytelling and incredible detail. His work is included in both public and private collections, and he regularly exhibits in galleries and museums across North America, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and the Winnipeg Art Gallery, among many others.

Established in 1987, the Inuit Art Foundation is a not-for-profit charitable organization that provides support to Canada’s Inuit arts communities and is the sole national body mandated to promote Inuit artists and art within Canada and internationally.

This magazine relies on donations made to the Inuit Art Foundation, a registered charitable organization in Canada (BN #121033724RR0001) and the United States (#980140282).

The Inuit Art Foundation gratefully acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through contributions from the Inuit Relations Directorate, Northern Governance Branch, Northern Affairs Organization at Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada.

Subscriptions subscribe@inuitartfoundation.org Canada: $33/yr. Excludes GST/HST. US: $44/yr. Elsewhere: $48/yr.

GST/HST #121033724RT0001.

Inuit Art Quarterly is a member of Magazines Canada.

Publication date of this issue: September 15, 2017 ISSN 0831-6708 Publication Mail Agreement #40050252 Postmaster send address changes to Inuit Art Foundation. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Inuit Art Foundation 215 Spadina Avenue, Suite 400 Toronto, ON, M5T 2C7 (647) 498-7717 inuitartfoundation.org ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRODUCTION WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN. THE INUIT ART QUARTERLY IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR UNSOLICITED MATERIAL. THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THE INUIT ART QUARTERLY ARE NOT NECESSARILY THOSE OF THE EDITORS OR THE INUIT ART FOUNDATION. PRINTED IN CANADA. DISTRIBUTED BY MAGAZINES CANADA. FROM TIME TO TIME WE MAKE OUR SUBSCRIBERS’ NAMES AVAILABLE TO COMPANIES WHOSE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES WE FEEL MAY BE OF INTEREST TO YOU. TO BE EXCLUDED FROM THESE MAILINGS, PLEASE SEND YOUR REQUEST, ALONG WITH A COPY OF YOUR SUBSCRIPTION MAILING LABEL TO THE ADDRESS ABOVE.

Editor Britt Gallpen Assistant Editor and Circulation Manager John Geoghegan Copy Editor Simone Wharton Editorial Assistant Monica Philpott Advertising Nicholas Wattson Design Tung Colour Gas Company

PAGE 54

Printing Sonic Print

Leslie Boyd Leslie Boyd was employed by the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative for 32 years, living in Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, and Toronto, ON, in the position of Director of both Kinngait Studios and its marketing office, Dorset Fine Arts. She has curated several Inuit art exhibitions, including Napachie Pootoogook (2004) and Uuturautiit: Cape Dorset Celebrates 50 Years of Printmaking (2009). She is Editor of Cape Dorset Prints: A Retrospective. Fifty Years at the Kinngait Studios (San Francisco: Pomegranate Communications, 2007) and currently works as an Inuit art consultant, curator and writer. PAGE 78

— Programs Coordinator Camille Usher Inuit Artist Database Program Coordinator Ashley McLellan Inuit Artist Database Program Officer Maddy Tripp Inuit Artist Database Program Officer Helen Olcott Igloo Tag Program Coordinator Bryan Winters —

BOARD OF DIRECTORS President Mathew Nuqingaq | Iqaluit, NU

Andrew Hunter

Chair Sammy Kudluk | Kuujjuaq, QC

Andrew Hunter is a curator, artist, writer and educator based in Hamilton, ON. He is currently the Fredrik S. Eaton Curator, Canadian Art, at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Over his thirty-year career, he has also held curatorial positions at the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the Kamloops Art Gallery and the University of Waterloo Art Gallery. He has produced exhibitions and writings for art galleries and museums across Canada, the United States, England, Croatia and China. PAGE 64

Secretary-Treasurer Beatrice Deer | Montreal, QC Jamie Cameron | Toronto, ON Patricia Feheley | Toronto, ON Helen Kaloon | Uqsuqtuuq, NU Jimmy Manning | Kinngait, NU —

EDITORIAL ADVISORY COUNCIL Mary Dailey Desmarais Heather Igloliorte Sarah Milroy Taqralik Partridge

Sarah Milroy Sarah Milroy is a Toronto, ON-based writer and art critic. She served as Editor and Publisher of Canadian Art magazine (1991–96) and as art critic of The Globe and Mail (2001–10). Milroy has contributed to publications on the work of Gathie Falk, Jack Chambers, Greg Curnoe and Fred Herzog, and she is a regular contributor to Canadian Art, Border Crossings and The Walrus. PAGE 82

FUNDED BY THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA

Inuit Art Quarterly

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FROM THE EDITOR

Tim Pitsiulak (1967–2016 Kinngait) — EET-EEPOW, the Legend (detail) 2014 Coloured pencil and graphite 76.2 × 111.8 cm ART GALLERY OF ONTARIO

Anniversary

On June 3, 2017, the Inuit Art Foundation celebrated its 30th anniversary. For three decades, our organization has had the privilege to work on behalf of Inuit artist to support creative growth and professional development and to share with the world the beauty and vitality of Inuit cultural production through the pages of our magazine.

On behalf of the entire Foundation, I would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to our previous and current editors, staff, board members and editorial advisory council members for their dedication; our donors, subscribers, corporate and government partners for their unwavering support; and, most importantly, the Inuit artists, curators and cultural workers who inspire us.

To mark the occasion, this milestone issue of the Quarterly takes stock of what got us here and the exciting road ahead. Inside, you’ll find features on beloved graphic artists Jessie Oonark, OC, RCA and Tim Pitsiulak by curators Sarah Milroy and Andrew Hunter, respectively, as well as an expansive, thoughtful piece on the needs of Inuit artists today by Inuvialuit artist Abraham Anghik Ruben, OC. We are also pleased to share the Portfolio “30 Artists to Know”, which brings together artists spanning more than two generations. Finally, we have included a selection of short features that capture a brief history of IAF highlights, the strategies and goals of our newest program the Igloo Tag Trademark and a snapshot of some of our thirty-year subscribers and their relationship with the IAQ. We are also excited to offer, for the first time, a themed insert. This guide serves as an overview to collecting Inuit art, current trends as identified by experts from coast to coast to coast and tips from lifelong collectors on building a collection you will love.

Following our subscriber survey this past year, we are excited to present the newly

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redesigned Quarterly. Our anniversary has provided us with the perfect opportunity to give you more of what you’ve told us you love: increased number of images and extended editorials, complemented with the clean and modern design you’ve come to expect from the IAQ. In addition, we have reworked some of our sections to integrate more robustly with our digital space, the most noticeable of which is our Calendar, which we have largely moved online to bring you the most up-to-date information on upcoming exhibitions and projects. In its place we bring you a behind the scenes look at select exhibitions from the artists and curators themselves. I’d like to thank our outgoing designer, Barbara Solowan of Berlin Studio Inc., for her vision in shaping the IAQ’s visual presence over the past three years and congratulate our new designers, Tung, on a beautifully refreshed design.

I hope you enjoy the changes in this issue.

Britt Gallpen Editor

Front

Itee Poooogook - Early May - 25.5 x 20 inches

Sheouak - Reflections in My Mind - 21 x 28 inches - 1960

WWW.MADRONAGALLERY.COM - 250 380 4660 - 606 VIEW ST. VICTORIA, B.C.

FALL 2017

THE GUILD IS MOVING! INUIT ART FIRST NATIONS ART FINE CRAFTS Soon at 1356 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal

www.laguilde-theguild.com Inuit Art Quarterly

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Fall 2017

Annie Pootoogook: Cutting Ice

Celebrating The Art of Canada*

Sept. 2, 2017 – Feb. 11, 2018 Annie Pootoogook: Cutting Ice delivers an intimate view of the life and legacy of a celebrated Inuk artist. Featuring over 50 Pootoogook drawings alongside works by her contemporaries, discover the award-winning artist’s candid and contemporary depictions of life in Cape Dorset.

Buy your tickets now at the new:

mcmichael.com

Annie Pootoogook (1969-2016), Myself in Scotland, 2005-2006, coloured pencil and felt-tip pen on paper, 76.5 × 56.6 cm, Gift from the Christopher Bredt and Jamie Cameron Collection, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Reproduced with the Permission of Dorset Fine Arts, 2016.10.6 * THE ART OF CANADA is an official mark of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.

Anniversary

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An Agency of the Government of Ontario

Front

FOUNDATION UPDATE

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

Celebrating 30 Years

PHOTO NIORE IQALUKJUAK, 2016

I would like to start this 30th anniversary issue of the Inuit Art Quarterly, my first as the newly-appointed President of the Board of Directors, by both looking back on all that we have accomplished and by addressing change. I’ve been involved with the Inuit Art Foundation for 18 years and a lot has changed in that time. Life is always changing and can be a bit scary, but it’s a very necessary process to make space for exciting, new things.

We have new staff members, who are just beginning their journeys with us, and I’m looking forward to seeing how they will build on the hard work of the people who have come before them. With these new additions, however, we also say goodbye to two of our board members, Billy Gauthier and Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory. I would like to thank them for being there for us; they have and will continue to move mountains as artists and activists. Their contributions to the Foundation will not be forgotten and will always be appreciated.

In this issue, we are also honoured to announce that we have taken control of the Igloo Tag Trademark program from Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada. We announced the acquisition of the program during the wonderful annual Nunavut Arts Festival, here in Iqaluit, coordinated by the Nunavut Arts and Crafts Association. This trademark is something that we feel protects us and is known worldwide and, now, will finally be run by an Inuit-led organization with an Inuk Program Coordinator. It’s our confidence booster. This feels like welcoming back an old friend from years ago, and we look forward to having this program running again, as it’s one of our identities as artists and as Inuit.

We thank you for being with us and supporting us for 30 years, and we hope you enjoy this landmark issue of the Inuit Art Quarterly.

Mathew Nuqingaq CM President, Inuit Art Foundation

This year, the IAF is celebrating 30 years of advocating for Inuit artists’ needs throughout Canada and beyond.

In addition to the Inuit Art Quarterly, the IAF offers a wide range of programs to support artists in their work.

Inuit Artist Database Launches

Kenojuak Ashevak Memorial Fund

After several years of development, the Inuit Art Foundation launched its new online artist biographical database on September 15, 2017. The publicly accessible platform is a centralized resource for collectors, gallerists, curators, artists and others to learn more about the diversity and talent of historic and contemporary Inuit artists, working in all media. The IAF is grateful for the support of Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, Mobilizing Inuit Cultural Heritage (York University), the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Government of Nunavut and Concordia University for their support of the project, and the Foundation welcomes public contributions to the database from all who are interested. To learn more about Inuit artists or to contribute your knowledge see iad.inuitartfoundation.org.

Established in 2014 in tribute to the late artist, the Kenojuak Ashevak Memorial Fund (KAMF) provides financial support for a professional visual artist to undertake a residency of their choice. The inaugural juried prize will be awarded later this year, and the IAF is currently assembling a jury.

To support the award and learn more visit us at inuitartfoundation.org.

IAF at Art Toronto Follow us on Twitter: @InuitArtFdn Like us on Facebook: Inuit Art Foundation Follow us on Instagram: inuitartfoundation Inuit Art Quarterly

Virginia J. Watt and Dorothy Stillwell Award Established in 1995, the Virginia J. Watt and Dorothy Stillwell Award supports Inuit post-secondary education in arts and culture. Previously offered biannually, starting this fall the $2,500 scholarship will be offered every year, and the recipient will be selected by an external jury. Application materials will be available by early October and due on November 15, 2017.

The IAF will return to Art Toronto this year to showcase the breadth and vibrancy of contemporary Inuit art to the international fair’s 20,000 visitors. Visit the IAF at booth B21 from October 27–30 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

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Fall 2017

FOUNDATION UPDATE

To learn more about what we’re up to, visit us online at: inuitartfoundation.org

Become a Sustainer and help support the Inuit Art Foundation!

Inuit Art Foundation Sustainers Program

The Inuit Art Foundation relies on the generosity of donors like you to develop programming to support the work of Inuit artists. The IAF is excited to announce the launch of our Sustainers Program. All donors are recognized in the IAQ and on the website, in the following categories: $5,000+ · Opportunity to be affiliated with a specific IAF project or program. · Annual luncheon with IAF to discuss new programs and explore new works by Inuit artists. · Opportunities to meet artists at special events and receptions. · A one-year subscription to IAQ. · Invitations to IAQ launches. · Acknowledgement in the magazine and on the website.

Igloo Tag Trademark Transferred On July 6, 2017, the IAF happily announced that the Foundation took over ownership of the Igloo Tag Trademark from the federal government after several years of stakeholder consultation. Established in 1958, this iconic mark distinguishes artwork made by Inuit from other mass-market, fraudulent objects. The transfer marks the first time in an almost 60-year history that the mark will be managed by Inuit. To ensure that the mark is as effective as possible, the IAF is undertaking an extensive consultation tour that began with the Nunavut Arts Festival. For more information on the trademark, current licensees, upcoming consultation dates, how to participate in an online consultation and more see iglootag.inuitartfoundation.org.

$1,000+ · Opportunities to meet artists at special events and receptions. · A one-year subscription to IAQ. · Invitations to IAQ launches. · Acknowledgement in the magazine and on the website. $500+ · A one-year subscription to IAQ. · Invitations to IAQ launches. · Acknowledgement in the magazine and on the website. $250+ · Invitations to IAQ launches. · Acknowledgement in the magazine and on the website. $100+ · Acknowledgement in the magazine and on the website.

ABOVE

The IAF leads stakeholder consultations during the Nunavut Arts Festival in Iqaluit, July 2017. To read about the program turn to page 78.

Anniversary

$2,500+ · Annual luncheon with IAF to discuss new programs and explore new works by Inuit artists. · Opportunities to meet artists at special events and receptions. · A one-year subscription to IAQ. · Invitations to IAQ launches. · Acknowledgement in the magazine and on the website.

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Front

THANK YOU

PHOTO INUIT ART FOUNDATION, 2017

“I would like to personally thank all of our donors. Without each and every one of you, we wouldn’t be able to produce our magazine, run artist support programs or help to share Inuit art with the world. Nakurmiik!”

SAMMY KUDLUK CHAIR, INUIT ART FOUNDATION

Nakurmiik!

You, the generous donors listed below, ensure the Inuit Art Quarterly is published. You also provide funding for artist residencies, such as the Kenojuak Ashevak Memorial Fund (KAMF), and other professional development opportunities and support the work of living artists. The Inuit Art Foundation relies on the generous support of donors to do this important work and is pleased to recognize donors who have contributed between June 2016 and June 2017. Thank you so much!

Sustainers $5,000+

$250–$499

Christopher Bredt and Jamie Cameron Informa Canada (Publications) Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP John and Joyce Price (KAMF) The Herb and Cece Schreiber Foundation (Publications) and one anonymous supporter

Joyce Keltie Charles Kingsley Margaret Newall Michael and Melanie Southern Barbara Turner Jaan Whitehead David and Catherine Wilkes (Endowment) Norman Zepp and Judith Varga

$1,000–$2,499 Susan M. Carter Christina Parker Gallery (Publications) Donald and Pat Dodds The Fath Group/O’Hanlon Paving Ltd. Patricia Feheley (Endowment and KAMF) David Forrest Inuit Art Society (Publications) The Michael and Sonja Koerner Charitable Foundation David and Liz Macdonald

$500–$999 Shary Boyle Arthur Drache, CM, QC Janice Gonsalves Erik Haites Katarina Kupca Alysa Procida and Kevin Stewart

Inuit Art Quarterly

$100–$249 Heather Beecroft (Publications) Christel Bieri (Publications) Karen Brouwers, in honour of Elisapee Ishulutaq Linda Cleman Carol A. Cole, in honour of Billy Gauthier Celia Denov Ginette Dumouchel, in honour of Tommy Niviaxie (KAMF and Publications) Jon Eliassen Carol Ann Ellett (KAMF) Lyyli Elliott Leah Erickson and Maureen Bereskin Alain Fournier Ed Friedman Britt Gallpen and Travis Vakenti Nelson Graburn, in honour of Katsuak Tumasi Mark Gustafson Dr. James M. Harris 10

Carol Heppenstall Mark Igloliorte Rosi and David Jory William Kemp A.B. Kliefoth, MD (Endowment) Maija M. Lutz Elizabeth McKeown Richard Mohr, in honour of Adventure Canada (Publications) Nancy Moore Michael J. Noone Leon Oberlander Donald Penrose Ann Posen Philip and Kathleen Power Victoria Prince Robin and David Procida Paula Santrach TELUS Hunter Thompson Jay Thomson (Publications) Roslyn Tunis (Publications) Gail Vanstone Manon Vennat James Vesper William Webster (Endowment) Claude M. Weil, in honour of Jim Shirley (Endowment) Scott White Mark and Marie Zivin and one anonymous supporter (KAMF)

Fall 2017

THANK YOU

Friends of the Foundation Mary Anglim Catherine Badke Eric Barnum Susan Baum Catherine Black Anne-Marie Danizio Lisa Eisen, in honour of Tiiu Strutt Leslie Eisenberg Claire S. Gold Alan and Paula Goldstein Karen and David Gorsline John A. Hanjian Mary Hanson Louisa Hollinshead Albert Holthuis (Publications) Dallas Hunt Heather Igloliorte Laurence Jacobs Chantal Junod Jo-Ann R. Kolmes Catherine Madsen (KAMF) Robert Michaud Suzanne Nash (KAMF) Gary Nelson Hal Olsen Prue Rains Blaine Rapp Diane Ravenscroft Leslie Reid Wendy Rittenhouse Enid Rokaw Sheila Romalis Anita Romaniuk Karine Schweitzer-Bordes Mari Shantz Scenery Slater Gregory and Lisa Sonek Ann Sprayregen Dave Tremblay Waddington’s Auctioneers & Appraisers (Endowment) and three anonymous supporters

Why I Give “IAQ is a blessing in its unique coverage and a miracle in its format.

Full-colour, outsize, print-edition magazines are a financial impossibility in current market conditions. So if the miracle is to continue, we all need to give what we can.”

RICHARD MOHR

Please Consider Supporting the Next 30 Years: How You Can Help Donations are essential to the programs that promote and celebrate Inuit art and artists. As a registered charitable organization in Canada (BN #121033724RR0001) and the United States (#980140282), the Inuit Art Foundation welcomes donations, sponsorships, legacy gifts and in-kind contributions.

The Inuit Art Foundation wants to hear from you!

Contact us at: contact@inuitartfoundation.org or 647-498-7717.

To learn more about the IAF’s rich history, made possible thanks to the generous support of donors over the last 30 years, turn to page 70.

Bequests Virginia Watt Perpetual Trust Darlene Coward Wight (right) examines artwork with famed printmaker Germaine Arnaktauyok at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1997

ADDITIONAL PROGRAM SUPPORT PROVIDED BY:

Anniversary

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Front

5 COVERS

Inuit Art Quarterly at 30 IAF staff share their favourite covers

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Though nearly 30 years old when it graced the cover of the IAQ (and even older now), Mother Nursing Child (1962) by Johnny Inukpuk, RCA (1911–2007) remains one of the boldest covers in the publication’s history, both in its content and its simplicity.

Inukpuk carved breastfeeding scenes throughout his career, but this early, intimate version is likely the most iconic. The work is given ample room to breathe on a clean grey background, inviting a closer look at the work’s tremendous detail, from the mother’s delicately rendered braids to her expressive crossed feet that cradle her feeding child.

Not a flashy cover, but certainly a favourite of mine.

Janet Kigusiuq’s (1926–2005) playful and lustrous Fruit Still Life (1997) is tauntingly tactile. This work—turned on its side for the cover—features rows of various fruits rendered in layers of delicate, transparent tissue. Decidedly more abstract than any cover image before or after it, this image is striking both for its rich, juicy palette and for its purposeful balance of rounded and rectilinear forms. Produced in the twilight of Kigusiuq’s career, this piece is a profound reminder of the depth and breadth of true creative spirit. It’s works like this that push at the boundaries of the field of Inuit art and reinforce the true contemporaneity of Kigusiuq’s work.

Floyd Kuptana’s playful take on the ubiquitous dancing bear in Ballroom Dancer (2005) offers a refreshing and amusing take on perceptions of Inuit art. The sculpture’s sleek, sinuous lines and minimal detailing deftly showcase Kuptana’s interest in humour and provocation, as well as his considerable skill. The work is also pitch-perfect for an issue that gave space to groundbreaking artists like Jamasee Pitseolak and Annie Pootoogook (1969–2016). Ballroom Dancer remains the only dancing bear ever published on the cover of the magazine, and, as such, is a clear reminder of the IAQ’s steadfast support of boundary-breaking artists over the past 30 years.

IAQ 5.3, Summer 1990

IAQ 22.3, Fall 2007

IAQ 23.1, Spring 2008

JOHN GEOGHEGAN

BRITT GALLPEN

ALYSA PROCIDA

Assistant Editor and Circulation Manager

Editor

Executive Director and Publisher

Inuit Art Quarterly

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To find your favourite cover visit: iaq.inuitartfoundation.org/magazine

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IAQ 24.4, Winter 2009 The detail of Ningiukulu Teevee’s print Imposing Walrus (2009) on the cover of the Winter 2009 issue is among my favourites. Spanning the full width of the page, Teevee’s playful and energetic lines wriggle, crack and bubble to produce the walrus’ wrinkled skin, adding texture and depth to an otherwise smooth two-dimensional image. The subtly coloured, leathery surface gently skims the page, punctuated by impressive white tusks. Barely visible are the creature’s gentle eyes. Teevee’s walrus only gives a glimpse of a potentially much weightier story, and one wonders what sits beyond the giant figure.

Arctic Char Is Swimming In The River In July, 2010/2017 sugar-lift etching & aquatint, 30.25 x 45 in

Tony Anguhalluq Studio PM

studiopmmontreal@gmail.com

CAMILLE USHER

Programs Coordinator

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Purchase & Consignment • Expert Appraisals • On-line Sales •

IAQ 28.3–4, Fall/Winter 2015 Whenever I look at Heather Campbell’s Early Break Up (2013), for a half second, I see an aerial photograph of seals (or are they whales?) swimming in a small patch of deep azure-coloured water, surrounded by thinning ice. It is not until I focus on how the saturated blue bleeds into muted periwinkle and turquoise that the ink reveals itself. There is a strong correlation between the material and subject matter, as working with ink requires that an artist not only lets go of some control in order to guide the material into desired forms, but also sees, as Campbell does, unique silhouettes as they come to the surface. I imagine the flowing ink as it spreads, mimicking—on a micro level—the simultaneously slow and swift process of hard ice breaking up into water.

ASHLEY MCLELLAN

Inuit Artist Database Program Coordinator

DID YOU KNOW? David Ruben Piqtoukun holds the honour of being featured on the cover of the IAQ more than any other artist. Starting in 1994 with his work The Jester (1988), Piqtoukun has graced the front of our publication a total of five times! Other covers include Winter 1996, Summer 1997, Winter 2003 and Spring 2007.

Anniversary

“Hunter Throwing Harpoon” Lucassie Echalook E9-1648 (1942 – cont.)

Part of the Shirley Smith Collection Inukjuak, Nunavik, c. 1964 H: 7.25” x W: 4”

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Front

HIGHLIGHTS

Exhibition Highlights A behind the scenes look at some notable projects on view now

To see a full list of exhibitions, visit our new enhanced calendar online at: calendar.iaq.inuitartfoundation.org

SEPTEMBER 17, 2017 – FEBRUARY 11, 2018

Annie Pootoogook: Cutting Ice McMichael Canadian Art Collection KLEINBERG, ON

In the days following the public announcement of the death of Annie Pootoogook (1969–2016), Chief Curator Sarah Stanners’ inbox was flooded by members of the community with pleas that the McMichael commemorate the significant loss to the arts community. The result is this expansive exhibition, curated by Nancy Campbell, who worked closely with the artist throughout her brief and extraordinary career: I knew Annie, and I spent a lot of time with her. For Cutting Ice, I am working with Jimmy Manning, an artist and elder in Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, because it is important to include the voices of family and friends from her community. This is a commemorative exhibition, not a typical career retrospective, so it was important to the community in Kinngait that this be a celebration of Annie’s life and the community who loved her.

Annie drew whatever she wanted.

She was a narrator of contemporary daily life in the North. Her autobiographical scenes and her experiments in large format drawings were tremendously influential on other artists in the community. This impact will be reflected by the inclusion of works by other artists who were working in the studio when Annie was active, namely Itee Pootoogook (1951–2014), Ohotaq Mikkigak (1936–2014), Siassie Kenneally, Shuvinai Ashoona, RCA, and Jutai Toonoo (1959–2015). She opened the doors for other Inuit artists to participate in the contemporary art milieu. She was a catalyst, and I hope this exhibition reflects that.

– Nancy Campbell

Annie Pootoogook (1969–2016 Kinngait) — Myself in Scotland 2005–6 Coloured pencil and felt-tip pen over graphite 76.5 × 56.6 cm REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION DORSET FINE ARTS

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Fall 2017

HIGHLIGHTS

Heather Campbell (b. 1973 Rigolet/Ottawa) — LEFT

Methylmercury (Work in Progress) 2017 Ink on mineral paper 71.1 × 48.3 cm

JUNE 21 – OCTOBER 8, 2017

In Search of Expo 67 Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal MONTREAL, QC

COURTESY THE ARTIST

To mark the 50th anniversary of the city’s World’s Fair, curators Lesley Johnstone and Monika Kin Gagnon bring together new works by contemporary Quebec and Canadian artists for this blockbuster exhibition. Here, artist Geronimo Inutiq discusses his dynamic, archive-based commission for the show:

Geronimo Inutiq (b. 1979 Montreal) — BELOW

Film stills of Ensemble/Encore 2017 Video COURTESY THE ARTIST

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017 – SPRING 2018

Ensemble/Encore (2016) is a multimedia installation in discussion with different ideas about katimavik, which in this context means “gathering place” in Inuktut. It was the official title of the fair’s Canada Pavilion, constructed in the shape of an inverted pyramid, and of an electronic composition

by Otto Joachim that was commissioned for the fair. I am also exploring the space and time that distance us from and also bring us closer to the 1967 Montreal World’s Fair. Using film and television clips, still pictures, prints and vinyl floor appliqué—as well as a spattering of French, English and Inuktut phrases—this work seeks to engage the public in different perspectives relating to the idea of katimavik. – Geronimo Inutiq

Insurgence/Resurgence Winnipeg Art Gallery WINNIPEG, MB

Heather Campbell is one of ten artists commissioned to create new works for this landmark exhibition curated by Julie Nagam and Jaimie Isaac. We hear from the artist on how she has responded to the exhibition’s central tenets of “hope, selfdetermination, renewal and a revisioning of Canada”: Methylmercury deals with the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric dam currently under construction in Labrador. A study by Harvard University concluded that if the area was flooded before removing vegetation and topsoil, the resulting levels of methylmercury would contaminate the natural food supply of those living downstream, including the Inuit community of Rigolet—my hometown.

In this painting, the sea goddess Nuliajuk (Sedna) symbolizes the sacred respect we have for our ocean and its creatures. As the ultimate symbol of female power in Inuit cultures across the Arctic, she unites us, no matter what region we are from.

Anniversary

The top of the painting is covered with a black mass, containing symbols of death.

A hand reaches out, grabbing Nuliajuk by the neck and forcing the poison down her throat. Here, Nuliajuk also symbolizes the ongoing violence our Indigenous women face. The red tape binding her wrists alludes to the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and the recent convictions for the murder of Nunatsiavummiut Loretta Saunders.

I feel that we are on the cusp of a shift in Inuit art. For so long Inuit art and culture were used as emblems of Canadiana, but we are now reclaiming our symbols and using them to resist colonization.

– Heather Campbell

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HIGHLIGHTS

OCTOBER 16–22, 2017

Channel 51 Igloolik: The Filmmaking Process Trinity Square Video TORONTO, ON

Zacharias Kunuk (b. 1957 Igloolik) — Ajainaa!

2001 Video 51m 23s COURTESY ISUMA

This fall, Inuit film will have pride of place in the 18th annual imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival. In addition to an exhibition, curator Isabella Weetaluktuk and coordinator Sam Cohn Cousineau will present a program of short films created by Igloolik Isuma Productions, Arnait and Artcirq, sponsored by the Inuit Art Foundation. As a primer, they’ve shared three films from the IsumaTV catalogue that you can’t miss:

Qulliq (Oil Lamp) (1993) 10 min A film by the Arnait Video Collective Producer: Arnait Video Collective

Ajainaa! (2001) 51 min A film by Zacharias Kunuk Producer: Paul Qulitalik

Tungijuq (2009) 7 min A film by Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël Producer: Kunuk Cohn Productions and Igloolik Isuma Productions

This is a beautiful and poetic piece focusing on a single object and shows viewers, in a non-didactic way, how to maintain a qulliq and what to do to make it function. It’s short but it’s packed with a lot of love by the women who made it.

Sometimes there’s a moment in a film that makes it incredible. In this film, which features first-hand accounts by elders reflecting on times of change, we hear from a woman about what it felt like, as a mother, when her children were taken from her to go to a residential school. It makes the whole film worth watching.

This ethereal film features Tanya Tagaq, CC, and Zacharias Kunuk, OC, and looks at Inuit relationships with animals, hunting and life.

Eight years on, it remains relevant for its contribution to a conversation that is very much connected to the present moment.

is not funded by the Canada 150 Fund). The meeting was very celebratory, and I raised my hand and said, “You have to understand that for some people this is not a celebration, there are ramifications and other histories you have to consider.” I began with works from 2000 to 2015 because these recent acquisitions have not received the same exposure as earlier works from 1965 and onwards. I was drawn to the idea of raising the flag. How do these works speak to Indigenous aesthetics? How do they speak specifically to the Inuit worldview? Why is it different? How do the works give us a different perspective? And since the collection represents Inuit, First Nations and Métis artists, I started with a list of about 700 works, which I then narrowed down to 49 works by 33 artists, including 11 Inuit artists.

At one point the Inuit works were disbanded and First Nations had to fight to maintain the IAC. In this light, the collection is a significant form of survival that challenges histories that were considered erased or works that were considered craft. We see through the work, the histories that Indigenous peoples have lived that are now

coming to the forefront, including in light of residential schools, environmental issues and the disc number identities. For this reason, among others, the IAC continues to be an essential resource.

– Ryan Rice

– Isabella Weetaluktuk

SEPTEMBER 16 – DECEMBER 10, 2017

raise a flag: works from the Indigenous Art Collection (2000–2015) Onsite Gallery, OCAD University TORONTO, ON

To mark the ongoing importance of the national Indigenous Art Collection, curator Ryan Rice brings together works from the past 15 years to showcase “a collection that represents a national identity of art from this land and stories that are only surfacing now”: The Indigenous Art Collection (IAC) just celebrated its 50th anniversary last year and continues to do acquisitions. It is the largest selection of contemporary Indigenous artwork in Canada and probably in the world.

However, most Canadians don’t know about the IAC and the unique perspective it has on understanding Canadian history.

The idea for raise a flag started when I was invited to a meeting in regards to Canada 150 funds (ed. note: this exhibition Inuit Art Quarterly

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Rachelle Lafond — Chiichinuu “Our Home” 2012 Thread and canvas 28 × 33 cm INDIGENOUS AND NORTHERN AFFAIRS CANADA REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION THE ARTIST

Fall 2017

A Division of Arctic Co-operatives Limited

Celebrating artistic expression for over 50 years

Fisherman Uriash Puqiqnak

www.northernimages.ca

Thank you to the Inuit Art Quarterly for devoting 30 years to promoting Inuit art and culture! websales@arctic.coop

1-888-468-4827

GATHERING OF SPIRITS ABRAHAM ANGHIK RUBEN

Danish Shaman: Through the Mist of Time Bronze

September 15 – October 14, 2017

Preview Reception with the artist: September 14, 5-7pm www.feheleyfinearts.com gallery@feheleyfinearts.com 65 George Street, Toronto 416.323.1373

Anniversary

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In Co-operation with:

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CHOICE

Annie Pootoogook Brief Case

by Elizabeth Logue

Inuit Art Quarterly

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Fall 2017

CHOICE

In drawing what cannot be seen on the surface, Pootoogook conjures up the poignant truth of what lies underneath. It is a clever sleight of hand.

Let me be brief.

Before writing this piece, I re-watched the short film/documentary Annie Pootoogook from 2006. In the film, we see Pootoogook (1969–2016) at home in Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, at work in the Studios. She is proud and confident, announcing she is an artist: the daughter of an artist, the granddaughter of an artist. She makes faces at the camera, sticking out her tongue, showing her playful and light-hearted side—a trait that shines through as an underlayer in many of her works. It is the subtle and irrepressible laughter of an inner giggle—that inner tickle that can lead to tears. This is what many of her pieces do for me, and what I see as her strength and inner clown—her calculated buffoonery.

Art often resonates with a viewer based on what is happening in their life at the time or how it connects to their lived experiences, but at times there is also something deeper that can’t be clearly articulated at first blush— or brush.

Annie Pootoogook’s Brief Case (2005) is one of those pieces that resonates with me on various levels. As a federal public servant the term “brief” is prominent in my day-to-day lexicon; it is both noun and verb.

We are asked to write briefs, to provide briefings, to keep things brief, to brief up, to debrief. This last one probably gets the most raised eyebrows and chuckles from outsiders to government given the image it conjures up and is perhaps the most appropriate for this piece.

I often hear about how Pootoogook drew her truth, her day-to-day reality, and not those scenes of days gone by in villages and camps before her time. She captured her

own time and her own life in these pieces, which echo the voices of my elders about speaking the truth of what you know and live, rather than the experiences of others. As an English Literature and Theatre graduate, I also place Pootoogook in a long lineage of artists and writers, including Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, who created great works from their lived experiences that continue to resonate across cultures and over generations.

As a theatre artist, I studied the art of bouffon—a style of clowning that provokes a pleasured response through performance, but also a word that indirectly translates to the cruelty and vacuousness of human society. Brief Case does just that. In drawing what cannot be seen on the surface, Pootoogook conjures up the poignant truth of what lies underneath. It is a clever sleight of hand.

In exploring my own bouffon side, I once created a character called Underwear Woman. A superheroine with super tights and many, many pairs of underwear, who flew around the world delivering clean underwear to those in need. Perhaps, like Pootoogook, I too was offering a service that would make people laugh and cause them to examine their own “dirty laundry”.

Brief Case gives us a fleeting glance at Pootoogook’s bouffon and true artist’s spirit at the intersection of playfulness, humour and deep insight.

— Elizabeth Logue is Director of Inuit Relations with Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada.

Annie Pootoogook (1969–2016 Kinngait) — Brief Case 2005 Lithograph 43.18 × 43.18 cm COURTESY INDIGENOUS ART CENTRE REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION DORSET FINE ARTS

Anniversary

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Front

CHOICE

Lizzie Ittinuar Map of Hamlet of Rankin Inlet, Nunavut

by Rebecca Huxtable

The IAQ has partnered with the Canada Council Art Bank to bring you a special collection of Inuit art for our 30th anniversary. To see our picks visit us at: iaq.inuitartfoundation.org

Inuit Art Quarterly

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Fall 2017

CHOICE

Ittinuar has almost completely abandoned the traditional motifs and often symmetrical compositions associated with Inuit wall hangings in exchange for a contemporary view of her home.

Master seamstress Lizzie Ittinuar’s work ranges from tapestry and finely beaded clothing to carving and doll making. Born in 1930 in Salliq (Coral Harbour), NU, like many artists before her, as well as her contemporaries, Ittinuar learned her craft through watching her ancestors. “We still follow our grandmothers and their grandmothers,” she explained in a 1992 interview with the Canadian Museum of Civilization (now the Canadian Museum of History).

“It’s the way we pass it on. It’s the traditional way of doing it. We are following the traditions of our ancestors.”

In Map of Hamlet of Rankin Inlet, Nunavut (2005), the artist combines traditional technique with contemporary subject matter. Using a large piece of black felt approximately 5 feet high by 6.5 feet wide as her canvas, she has beaded, with striking detail, and likely incredible patience, a street map of the hamlet of Kangiqliniq (Rankin Inlet), NU, including identifying names, houses, lakes and the local airport.

Framing the map are beaded and felted images of the local people, flora and fauna,

the Nunavut flag and the Inuktut title of the work. In this piece, Ittinuar has almost completely abandoned the traditional motifs and often symmetrical compositions associated with Inuit wall hangings in exchange for a contemporary view of her home. Ittinuar’s piece offers us the most fleeting window into her life and the community context in which it was produced.

Purchased directly from the artist by the Canada Council Art Bank in 2006, this work was created through a grant from the Canada Council. It is a particularly beloved artwork by many visitors to the collection, which is comprised of over 17,000 artworks.

I, myself, am repeatedly struck by the mastery of the material and technique of the artist, and I chose to highlight this work because of the powerful affect it has on me each time I view it. My eyes move back and forth across the beadwork and embroidery as I soak in the artist’s choice of colour and texture.

If textile works traditionally feature narratives of life and community—family, games, animals, hunting and life on the land—as a way to carry forward culture for

future generations, what story is shared through Ittinuar’s piece? The lines of the town and surrounding topography, combined with named locations, fill me with curiosity and quite literally send me straight to Google Street View where I am met with confirmation of Ittinuar’s accuracy and deep intrigue of life in this place. The artist’s delicate stitches trace the outlines of familiar and numbered buildings and individual homes, as well as the undulating shorelines and the diagonal pull of the north arrow marker on the bottom right corner of the map. The tiny silver and white beads offering the sensation of viewing the town from above, seen as though twinkling lights during a nighttime fly over. What emerges from the deep black ground of Ittinuar’s cloth canvas is the intimate observation and indexing of a home, proudly named and sited in the Kivalliq region of Canada’s largest and northernmost territory.

— Rebecca Huxtable is Manager of the Canada Council Art Bank.

Lizzie Ittinuar (b. 1930 Kangiqliniq) — Map of Hamlet of Rankin Inlet, Nunavut 2005 Wool and beads 152 × 198 cm COLLECTION CANADA COUNCIL ART BANK

Anniversary

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Front

PROFILE

For three decades, the Inuit Art Quarterly has been privileged to share the richness and dynamism of Inuit art with our loyal readers, a handful of whom have been with us since our first issue in the spring of 1986. In the stories that follow, we hear about what the IAQ means to them and why they have subscribed for 30 years.

NEW HAVEN, CT

GUELPH, ON

Charles C. Kingsley

Heather Beecroft

My wife and I received an Inuit sculpture as a wedding present in 1960. My interest in and appreciation of Inuit art started then and has grown ever since. During the 1960s, I was in Montreal at least once a year, and, later, began annual visits to Toronto. These trips offered me the chance to visit museums and galleries that featured Inuit art. Later, I was fortunate to visit Kinngait (Cape Dorset), Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake) and a few other communities in Nunavut, where I met and had fascinating talks with some wonderful artists. I will never forget sitting next to Kenojuak Ashevak, CC, ON, RCA (1927–2013) at dinner one evening and then sharing a short boat ride with her as she told me stories.

The IAQ has helped me learn more about and kept me informed of developments with respect to Inuit art for many, many years now, and, for that, I am most grateful. I always look forward to receiving my next edition of IAQ. I am always interested in learning about new publications and exhibitions, and I particularly enjoy articles about and interviews with various artists.

Getting the IAQ in my mailbox four times a year means that Inuit art is alive and well and kicking! I think it’s wonderful that it’s still around, and I want it to survive. Even though print publications are becoming less common, I think it’s vitally important to have something you can handle and go back to again and again. Over the years, my archive has developed some holes as I’ve routinely gifted copies of the IAQ to colleagues and first-time collectors. I hope they love it as much as I do.

Because it’s the only voice that remains dedicated to Inuit artists, it’s remained the one really consistent source to learn about what artists are doing today and some of

One of Charles Kingsley’s favourite works by Kenojuak Ashevak (1927–2013 Kinngait)

Inuit Art Quarterly

Illustrious Owl 1999 Lithograph 57 × 76.5 cm

Heather Beecroft in a custom wool duffle vest by Qamani’tuaq artist Irene Avaalaaqiaq Tiktaalaaq, 2014

© DORSET FINE ARTS

PHOTO DEAN PALMER

the new techniques they are using. The IAQ brings forward new work that I might not see, including pieces produced by Inuit in the South as well as in the North.

This pushes us, as collectors, to see and to value the contributions of Inuit artists, regardless of where they are working.

I loved the Spring 2015 (IAQ 28.1) issue with Saimaiyu Akesuk’s Quamajaq (Fly) (2014) on the cover. It had a great mix of local and international coverage, and it examined history while also bringing it up-to-date.

Particularly, the cover image tells outsiders something they might not know about life for the artist (like there are bugs in the North!).

RIGHT

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Fall 2017

PROFILE

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA

George E. Marcus

ABOVE

Face Cluster (c. 1980) by Lucy Tasseor Tutsweetok, as reproduced in Pure Vision: The Keewatin Spirit (1986), in the collection of George E. Marcus

Anniversary

I bought my first Inuit carving, by Leah Qumaluk (1934–2010), at the 1967 World’s Fair in Montreal, QC. I was fascinated by it and by the accompanying government produced promotional brochure on “Eskimo Art” (which I also still have). The following summer, I visited various parts of Canada, starting in Vancouver, BC, which brought me to the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) where I met Mrs. Bell, then head of the gallery store. This led to several purchases from the VAG, followed by yet more additions, including prints, largely from Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, artists, including Lucy Qinnuayuak (1915–1982), Kenojuak Ashevak, CC, ON, RCA (1927–2013) and Parr (1893–1969), as well as Jessie Oonark, OC, RCA (1906–1985) based in Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake), NU. Later, a visit to the Arctic enabled me to meet 23

Pauta Saila, RCA (1916–2009). One of my favourite works in my collection is a piece

by Lucy Tasseor Tutsweetok (1934–2012) that was included in Norman Zepp’s exhibition Pure Vision: Masterworks of the Keewatin (1986).

When IAQ began, I added it to my growing collection of books and exhibition catalogues. I find this archive still vividly inspiring, and I’ve got the complete collection of the IAQ on the shelf in the den. What I like most are the evaluative stories—what an artist is up to, what they’ve done and how their work has evolved. I think we’ve largely run out of wall space and places for carvings, but it remains difficult to turn away from something that brings life along with it. I subscribe because I want to support, if ever so modestly, the community of Inuit artists.

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PROFILE

MERCER ISLAND, WA

WINNIPEG, MB

John and Joyce Price

Darlene Coward Wight Curator of Inuit Art, Winnipeg Art Gallery

I made my discovery of the world of Inuit art in 1975 when I read about an exhibition at the now closed Snow Goose Gallery in the local Seattle newspaper. The show sounded so interesting that I went over to see it on my lunch break and was immediately taken with a stonecut by Pitseolak Ashoona, OC, RCA (c. 1904–1989) titled Animals of the Deep from 1973. I thought, This is an interesting image, but at that point in time, I had no idea who the artist was, and I decided I needed to learn more. The next day, I changed my mind and bought it. That first print brought me into the world of Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, and, eventually, the rest of the Arctic.

In the time since, I have been fortunate to build a significant collection and, more importantly, to form lasting relationships with artists I admire, including Kenojuak Ashevak, CC, ON, RCA (1927–2013), Pitseolak Niviaqsi (1947–2015) and Jimmy Manning, among many others.

My wife, Joyce, and I have two complete runs of the Inuit Art Quarterly and they are full of interesting information that’s been very important for us in learning about different artists, communities and arts programs. We have many favourite issues, but after much thought we agreed the commemorative issue on Kenojuak Ashevak (27.1, Winter 2014) is the most dear to us. Over our lives, collecting the magazine has kept us up-to-date, particularly with new, younger artists. There are always new forms of art coming into existence and we, as older collectors, need to recognize that.

We are so pleased that the Quarterly continues on and, especially, that the recent issues have remained as interesting as the issues of the past. I only wish more people were aware of it so they could enjoy it as much as we do.

Darlene Coward Wight (right) examines artwork with famed printmaker Germaine Arnaktauyok at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1997

When asked to contribute to this special 30 year issue of Inuit Art Quarterly, I pulled volume 1, number 1 (Spring 1986) from my bookshelf. It features a fascinating article by Japanese printmaker Naoko Matsubara, commenting on the collective production of prints as practiced in Inuit print shops. Terry Ryan, former West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative manager, was invited to respond in the following issue. I was hooked! There have been so many thoughtprovoking, even provocative, articles published in the IAQ, and, as a researcher, I consider them essential reading. Also of great importance for my work have been the interviews with artists, notably, the Arts Alive, Fall/Winter 2004, special issue (19.3–4) that included no less than 18 substantial interviews with Inuit artists.

The IAQ has been a very supportive means for the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG) to let its key audiences know about our exhibitions and publications and has also been a way to gain information about those produced by other museums and commercial galleries. Over the years, I have filed copies of IAQ articles into artist and subject files that will now be part of the research available in the new Inuit Art Centre at the WAG. Thank you Inuit Art Quarterly!

Qavavau Manumie, John Price and Arnaqu Ashevak in Kinngait Studios, 2008

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Fall 2017

The WAG’s largest-ever exhibition of contemporary Indigenous art, featuring work by 28 artists from across Canadian territories and nations.

Curated by Jaimie Isaac and Julie Nagam

BARRY ACE KC ADAMS JOI T. ARCAND

OPENS SEPT 22

DEE BARSY SCOTT BENESIINAABANDAN JORDAN BENNETT HEATHER CAMPBELL BRUNO CANADIEN HANNAH CLAUS DAYNA DANGER EARTHLINE TATTOO COLLECTIVE BRACKEN HANUSE CORLETT TSEMA IGHARAS CASEY KOYCZAN KENNETH LAVALLEE DUANE LINKLATER TANYA LUKIN LINKLATER AMY MALBEUF KENT MONKMAN CAROLINE MONNET TIFFANY SHAW-COLLINGE FRANK SHEBAGEGET AMANDA STRONG JOSEPH TISIGA COUZYN VAN HEUVELEN ISABELLA WEETALUKTUK LINUS WOODS

INSURGENCE

TIT LE S PON S OR

RESURGENCE

Couzyn van Heuvelen. Baleen Lure, 2015. Baleen, fish hook, thread, brass. Collection of the artist.

URSULA JOHNSON

27-30 October 2017 Metro Toronto Convention Centre arttoronto.ca

Introduction / Profiles / Trends Authenticity / Resources p29

p45

p32

p36

p48

Collecting Inuit Art

TEXTILE / PHOTOGRAPHY / CERAMICS / PAPER / STONE / BONE / METAL / IVORY

COLLECTING GUIDE

Soapstone Is Just The Start Eva Ikinilik Nagyougalik (b. 1965 Qamani’tuaq) I Remember Colouring on the Blackboard 2006 Embroidery floss and felt on wool cloth 64.8 × 69.9 cm COURTESY MARION SCOTT GALLERY

Jumping In —

Collections come in all shapes and sizes.

Some focus on a particular subject, artist or community, while others are more eclectic in their approach. The better collections are built by those who have put in the effort to learn about the art form. My best advice before purchasing would be to visit as many museums and galleries as possible and to

Anniversary

Inuit art is one of the most vibrant, varied, thriving and relevant art forms in Canada today. Covering the entire range of fine art disciplines and beyond, Inuit artists are continuously innovating to create vital commentary on contemporary life in the North and South. These artists stand confidently on the world stage at international exhibitions such as documenta and the Venice Biennale, while representing the unique and critically important perspective of Inuit.

return frequently. The more you see, the better you get at figuring out what you like and learning “who’s who”. Learn why the names are important and, before buying, ask yourself, “Is this a good example of the artist’s work, or am I paying a premium for an important signature on an otherwise unremarkable work?”

Don’t be afraid to ask questions in galleries. Dealers should be willing to spend time with you and to talk to you about the works they have in their inventory. Asking

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questions is a great way to determine whether you are comfortable with and/or appreciated by the gallery. You will want to ally yourself with a few good dealers. This is particularly important since good galleries are happy to work with serious collectors, who often offload earlier purchases to upgrade as the learning curve increases.

Mark London Owner, Galerie Elca London MONTREAL, QC

Special Section

ᓯᓈ: ᓄᑖᑦ ᓴᓇᐅᒐᐃᑦ ᐊᒻᒪᓗ ᓴᓇᙳᐊᖃᑎᒌᑦᑐᑦ ᓄᓇᕗᒥ Floe Edge: Contemporary Art

ᐱᖅᑯᓯᑐᖓᕐᓅᖓᒐᓚᑦᑐᖅ.

and Collaborations from Nunavut Hikup Hinaa: Uplumiqnitanik

ᒐᕙᒪᒃᑯᑦ ᓄᓇᕗᒻᒥᑦ ᐃᑲᔪᖅᑐᖅᑐᑦ ᖃᓄᐃᓐᓂᐅᔪᓂᑦ ᒫᓐᓇ ᑎᑎᖅᑐᒐᕐᓂᑦ.

Hanatjuhiit Katimaqatiillu Nunavunmit Dérive de glaces : Art contemporain et collaborations du Nunavut ᔭᐃᒪᓯ ᐱᑎᐅᓚᖅ/Jamasie Pitseolak ᓚᕕᓂᐃ ᕙᓐ ᓯᐅᕙᓚᓐ/Lavinia Van Heuvelen

TRADITIONAL WITH A TWIST.

The Government of Nunavut supports contemporary arts.

ᓇᓚ ᐱᑕ/Nala Peter ᒨᓇ ᓇᑦᓯᒃ Mona Nester

ᓂᑯᒻ ᐱᐅᕚ ᑲᒻᐸᒡ/Nicole Camphaug

PITQUHIUYUT PIRINGAPLUNI .

Kavamatkut Nunavunmi ikayuinnaqtut uplumiqnitanik hanatjuhiqnik.

ENTRE TRADITION ET MODERNITÉ.

Le gouvernement du Nunavut appuie l’art contemporain. ᒫᑎᐅ ᓄᕿᙵᖅ /Mathew Nuqingaq ᐊᔾᔩᑦ: ᔭᔅᑕᓐ ᐅᐊᓇᑳᑦ/Photos: Justin Wonnacott/Piksautit: Justin Wonnacott

IAF I N U I T A R T F O U N D AT I O N

To learn more about donating contact us at:

400 - 215 Spadina Avenue To r o n t o , O N | M 5 T 2 C 7

contact@inuitartfoundation.org 647-498-7717

SUPPORT THE NEXT 30 YEARS! T h e I n u i t A r t F o u n d a t i o n i s a re g i s t e re d c h a r i t y i n C a n a d a ( # 1 2 1 0 3 3 7 2 4 R R 0 0 0 1 ) a n d t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s ( # 9 8 0 1 4 0 2 8 2 ) . A l l d o n o r s w i l l re c e i v e a t a x re c e i p t f o r t h e i r g e n e ro u s c o n t r i b u t i o n s .

Anniversary

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Special Section

COLLECTING GUIDE

Collector Profiles

Chris Bredt and Jamie Cameron Toronto, ON —

When we got married, Chris said, “Why don’t we get a piece of art to replace the posters on the wall?” We decided to do some research before bidding on our first Inuit print at auction. Chris visited local Inuit galleries and had a great time, especially with Budd Feheley, who became a mentor to us. Our collection was originally very Kinngait (Cape Dorset)-centric, but through trips to Winnipeg and Vancouver we began to branch out and spread our own wings. Our collection has been a passion for us to share and a good outlet from our work. It keeps growing because we fall in love with art and artists over and over again. Art is an important part of our life and along the way we’ve formed strong friendships with collectors, gallery owners and artists. And that’s what it’s about.

Our advice? Buy what you love and buy within your limits. Appreciate everything else, and make a point to become as knowledgeable and connected with the people in the field as you can. Because whether you can afford a piece or not, if you love the art, you will have valuable friendships and find ways to enjoy the art form and be a part of the community. It is inspiring to go North— not to buy art, but to understand and feel connected to Inuit, their places and their way of life.

01 Works by Karoo Ashevak, Josephie Kokseak, Ennutsiak and Pauta Saila in front of a painting by Wolf Kahn

01

Edward J. Guarino Yonkers, NY

02 Annie Pootoogook Couple Sleeping 2003–04 Coloured pencil, ink and graphite 33 × 53.3 cm

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Becoming an art collector has been a slow but steady evolution that continues to this day. My collection was built on a high school teacher’s salary, and though I am now retired, I am still collecting. I started buying Inuit art around 1995 after seeing it in Vancouver. I was particularly attracted by the use of line and multiple perspectives in works on paper and quickly became obsessed with the work of Janet Kigusiuq. These days, I am drawn to edgier works by Napachie Pootoogook, Shuvinai Ashoona, Saimaiyu Akesuk, Cee Pootoogook and others who explore dark themes and subjects. I believe that in order to build a great collection the one thing needed is passion. I have three rules: buy from the heart, buy the best you can afford and utilize layaway plans.

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COLLECTING GUIDE

Rich and Kim Reading Laurel, MD

03

—

We stumbled across the work of Abraham Anghik Ruben through some images online and were immediately captivated by his pieces that focus on the Norse and Inuit connection. However, it wasn’t until his exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution in 2012 that the door really opened for us to find Kipling Gallery and to establish our relationship as patrons. Rich saw the exhibition three times.

When we began collecting Abraham’s work, we were already collectors of other Inuit art, but for about the past five years, it’s really been all about him. Abraham has the ability to tell entire stories with multiple chapters in his sculptures. He tunes into the world—the universe—at a different level.

In the ensuing years, we’ve spent time with him and would count him as a friend.

He’s been in our home, and, in turn, we’ve travelled to see various exhibitions of his work.

If there’s an artist that makes work that resonates with you, don’t overthink it. The premise of collecting art is to have it in your home and to enjoy it everyday. It should create music in you. That’s what should drive you onward.

03 Naomi Ityi Untitled late 1990s Wool, felt and embroidery thread 73.7 × 96.5 cm COURTESY EXPANDING INUIT

04 The solarium in Rich and Kim Reading’s home exclusively features sculptures by Abraham Anghik Ruben

“If there’s an artist that makes work that resonates with you, don’t overthink it.

The premise of collecting art is to have it in your home and to enjoy it everyday.”

RICH AND KIM READING

Stephanie Comer and Rob Craigie Chicago, IL —

Our first piece was a wall hanging by Naomi Ityi, given to us by Stephanie’s father for our wedding in 1998. He had been travelling in the Arctic by floatplane and would buy art in the communities. A few years later, in 2001, we did the Northwest Passage by boat with him, visiting Uqsuqtuuq (Gjoa Haven), Iqaluktuuttiaq (Cambridge Bay) and Mittimatalik (Pond Inlet). It was really on that trip that we became hooked. Our collection has been built around works that document the abrupt and extreme changes in the way of life in the North, from artists such as Parr to Annie Pootoogook and Jutai Toonoo. We never imagined it would grow to what it’s become.

Our website, Expanding Inuit, came together in large part out of wanting to get organized. It also reflects how much of this work came to be in our collection, as most of it was curated online and selected through photographs and email. Most importantly though, we feel the website allows us to be better stewards for the work and to share it.

The thing that’s been amazing is how much of a community there is around Inuit art. A lot of the collectors we’ve met along the way have been really open to sharing their knowledge, and the dealers have been incredible to work with—you can really trust them, and they are great educators.

We really can’t emphasize that enough; they have been hugely influential.

04

Anniversary

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Special Section

Toonoo Sharky R.C.A. - Protective Bird - 16 x 16 x 7 Inches

WWW.MADRONAGALLERY.COM 606 VIEW ST. VICTORIA, B.C. - 250 380 4660

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Fall 2017

Excellence in Contemporary Inuit Art

www.feheleyfinearts.com gallery@feheleyfinearts.com 65 George Street, Toronto 416 323 1373

Ningiukulu Teevee, GENERATIONS (Triptych), 2017, Coloured Pencil, 48 x 90�

Anniversary

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Special Section

COLLECTING GUIDE

Collecting Trends

2/'Conceptual Work —

A big part of my interest for the gallery and for collectors is showing artists that don’t have a typical point of view that leads viewers to learn something new and fresh. I enjoy works that lead down the path of learning and that’s what Couzyn van Heuvelen’s works did for me. There is a whole history here that hasn’t been told, there is so much possibility, so much to examine and explore. How exciting is that?

Collecting the work of artists like Couzyn provides an opportunity to participate in a field that is continually growing—art that is moving forward.

We are being given an opportunity to be a part of what will be our future’s history, to collect art with a future rather than a past perspective.

LaTiesha Fazakas

Owner, Fazakas Gallery VANCOUVER, BC

01 Joe Talirunili

Migration Boat c. 1965–66 Grey stone, antler, wood, ivory, sealskin and thread 22.9 × 36.8 × 11.4 cm

01

COURTESY WALKER’S FINE ART & ESTATE AUCTIONS

02 Couzyn van Heuvelen Avataq 2016 Screen printed Mylar, ribbon, aluminum and helium 91.4 × 76.2 × 40.6 cm

1/'Quality is Key —

Our auction clients—newcomers as well as seasoned collectors—are focusing increasingly on works of quality, rarity and uniqueness, which is something that applies even to modestly priced pieces. Although established collectors are always looking to fill in gaps with choice and unusual examples, surprisingly, many new collectors are zeroing in on those same works right off the bat. We have been seeing increasing numbers of crossover collectors of Canadian art, who now realize that both “classic” and more modern works of Inuit art fit quite comfortably with historic and contemporary art made by southern Canadian artists, as well as First Nations artists. Interest in exceptional works by established artists and anonymous masters is at a high point right now. This is particularly noticeable in sculpture from the 1950s to 1970s— including works by artists such as Johnny

COURTESY FAZAKAS GALLERY

Inukpuk, Karoo Ashevak, John Tiktak, Andy Miki and Joe Talirunili, to name only a very few—but it is also apparent with prime examples of two-dimensional Inuit art.

While there is always demand for ‘name’ artists, most astute collectors simply want the highest quality pieces that fit their budgets and tastes. I encourage new collectors to ask questions and to compare the works on offer with published examples.

Look carefully, do your homework, ask for advice, develop your taste and then trust your instincts.

Ingo Hessel

Head of Inuit & First Nations Art, Walker’s Fine Art & Estate Auctions OTTAWA, ON

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COLLECTING GUIDE

03

NOTE: Some materials commonly used in Inuit art, such as whalebone, ivory and sealskin, are subject to international law restricting their export from Canada. Export and import permits are possible to obtain in some circumstances, so be sure to work with a reputable dealer to assist if necessary.

03 Bart Hanna Transforming Shaman 2016 Marble with steatite inlay 78.7 × 66 × 50.8 cm COURTESY SPIRIT WRESTLER GALLERY

04 Itee Pootoogook Floe Edge, Winter 2009 Serigraph 36.8 × 104.8 cm COURTESY WADDINGTON’S AUCTIONEERS & APPRAISERS

3/'Mixed-Media Sculpture

4/'Prints

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—

Inuit art is now in transition; nearly all the original, first generation Inuit artists, collectors, curators and supporters have retired or passed away. Many of the traditional Inuit ways of life and values have been replaced by, or exist alongside, the electronic gadgets and social media of this newest generation. Naturally, subject matter in art has changed to represent new interpretations of living in Arctic communities today. Contemporary Inuit artists express what they see and experience in their everyday lives, and, like earlier generations, make work about survival, but in a different context.

So what makes one sculptor more successful than another? To me it is a combination of artistic skill, unique perspective and a professional work ethic, as well as the ability to act as ambassadors for their art, community, culture and country.

Some of the most impressive artists working today are those who utilize innovative materials and techniques. Sculptors like Michael Massie, Mattiusi Iyaituk, Billy Gauthier and Bart Hanna incorporate traditional materials of earlier generations such as stone, bone or ivory with new media, including glass, wood, plastics, a variety of metals and semi-precious and imported stones. I was once told by a leading artist that “what is contemporary today is traditional tomorrow.” These innovative artworks will inspire younger artists to continue evolving in their future representation of Inuit art.

While the earliest stonecut and stencil prints from Kinngait (Cape Dorset) still dominate the secondary market, another buying trend has recently emerged. Prints and drawings produced in the last decade or so have now begun to appear at auction and are capturing strong interest from collectors.

While we are used to seeing Kenojuak Ashevak’s striking images from the 2000s fetch more than their issue price—we are now seeing this promising trend extend to some of the second and third generation artistic talents, such as Itee Pootoogook, Tim Pitsiulak and Shuvinai Ashoona.

What is fuelling this trend? For more experienced collectors, it may be a second chance at the prints they missed out on when the works first appeared in their favourite gallery. But for younger and newer collectors, who represent much of the appetite for these images, these prints represent something fresh and exciting. In fact, much of the interest is being drawn from collectors new to the art form, encountering these contemporary prints when they visit the auction house for one of our other specialty events. These younger buyers, from a broader collector base, are a promising trend for artists and for the art form.

Christa Ouimet

Inuit Art Specialist, Waddington’s Auctioneers & Appraisers TORONTO, ON

Nigel Reading

Co-Director & Curator, Spirit Wrestler Gallery VANCOUVER, BC

04

Anniversary

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Special Section

Nunavut is the only territory/province without a performing arts centre Stories and music provide children with a sense of belonging Inuit stories, songs, dances and drums were banned during colonization and are being reclaimed by Inuit artists The performing arts are the most effective way of securing a language at risk

We need a space for Inuit performers to create, build skills and present their art.

For more information on how to help us: www.qaggiavuut.com

We combine )&*years of experience with superior service to achieve extraordinary results.

!"#$%&&& !$'&%&&&

!()%(&&

Inuit Art www.waddingtons.ca Christa Ouimet co@waddingtons.ca !"#-%!&-#"%!

COLLECTING GUIDE

5/'Photography

7/'Kivalliq Sculpture

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—

02

For those of us in the South, northern image making provides an important point of access to not only Arctic landscapes, but also the people, cultures and communities that inhabit those lands. Beyond providing a documentary view, photography and lensbased media occupy an important space in the milieu of contemporary Inuit art production—one that shouldn’t be overshadowed by the important and enduring legacy of graphic arts and sculpture.

Photographic practices are long established in the North and are more emergent amidst urban Inuit communities in the South. As such, this is a pivotal moment for institutional and private collectors to recognize the variety and breadth of Inuit photographic culture, to support these artists and to give our focused attention to their work.

02 Andy Miki

Animal c. 1975 Stone 16.5 × 5.1 × 12.7 cm PHOTO JOHN MACDONALD/WADDINGTON’S AUCTIONEERS & APPRAISERS

Alana Traficante

Acting Curator of Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of Hamilton

Stone carving from the Kivalliq region remains incredibly popular among collectors.

Beginning in the 1960s, artists from the region created highly stylized and often abstract work due to the hard local basalt stone. The relative isolation of the communities of Arviat, Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake) and Kangiqliniq (Rankin Inlet) also appears to be a determinant in the austere art of the region.

Artists such as John Kavik, Andy Miki, John Pangnark, Miriam Marealik Qiyuk, John Tiktak and Lucy Tasseor Tutsweetok each developed distinctive styles, and their work continues to be coveted by both new and established collectors.

Though older works command high prices on the secondary market, recent works

by Kivalliq artists such as Toona Iquliq, Lucy Tikiq Tunguak, Mary Tutsuituk, George Arlook and many others remain affordable.

Whether the focus or simply an accent, works from the Kivalliq region belong in every collection!

HAMILTON, ON

Maryse Saraux

Director, Art Inuit Paris PARIS, FRANCE

01 Niore Iqalukjuak

Down by Sinaasiurvik 2017 Digital photograph COURTESY THE ARTIST 03

6/'Ceramics —

Our collecting is fairly diverse, and we purchase work that we love and that excites us. The Earthlings (2017) exhibition at Esker Foundation was an impactful introduction to the extraordinary ceramic works that have been and continue to be produced in Kangiqliniq (Rankin Inlet).

Being able to spend time with such a volume of these incredible works together in one place was an influential and compelling experience. The works stand out for their strong sense of narrative that is rooted in contemporary experience and is also strongly connected to the individual history of the artists and their community.

Jim Hill

Chair, Esker Foundation CALGARY, AB

01

Inuit Art Quarterly

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COLLECTING GUIDE

8/'Oil Stick Drawings —

Although there has been a strong focus on graphic works coming out of Kinngait (Cape Dorset) for the last ten years, large oil stick drawings from Panniqtuuq (Pangnirtung) and Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake) have garnered captive audiences and dedicated collectors.

Through the gallery, we have undertaken projects with Panniqtuuq-based elder Elisapee Ishulutaq and Qamani’tuaq artist Tony Anguhalluq. Both enjoy experimenting with oil stick and have taken to working on impressive scales, which the medium helps to facilitate. These museum-scale pieces have the impact of a painting, with a cultural context that is distinctly Inuit. As a result, they are popular with a wide range of collectors, who are seeking dynamic and materially rich objects for their spaces. I would encourage people to look not only at the formidable talent coming out of Kinngait, but also to try and find ways that allow artists from other communities to come to the fore. The talent is certainly out there.

03

Robert Kardosh

05 Elisapee Ishulutaq

Owner/Curator, Marion Scott Gallery VANCOUVER, BC

Untitled (Children Playing a Game) 2016 Oil stick on paper 57.2 × 76.2 cm COURTESY MARION SCOTT GALLERY

04

03 John Kurok Heaven on Geese 2016 Smoke-fired porcelain 21 × 17 × 11 cm

04 Shuvinai Ashoona One Million Dollar Burger and Fries 2017 Coloured pencil and ink 128.3 × 137.2 cm

PHOTO SHARY BOYLE

COURTESY FEHELEY FINE ARTS

Anniversary

9/'Contemporary Inuit Drawing —

In the last 15 years, the most innovative centre of drawing in Canada has been a small studio located on Qikiqtaaluk (Baffin Island). Since 2001, Kinngait Studios has been home to artists whose individual styles and subject matter have earned them national and international recognition as some of the finest Canadian graphic artists.

This development in Inuit art has been remarkable because, until 2001, drawings were tied to printmaking and were seldom considered to be finished works themselves.

Following the example of young artist Annie Pootoogook, a group broke from tradition to find total freedom in expression and subject matter.

Some of the original artists, such as Jutai Toonoo, Itee Pootoogook and Tim Pitsiulak, have since passed away, but new artists, such as Saimaiyu Akesuk and Padloo Samayualie, are joining senior artists, like Shuvinai Ashoona and Ningiukulu Teevee, in creating original, dynamic drawings. As Kinngait Studios continues to nurture and support the drawing program, the success of the first 15 years will no doubt be carried into the future.

Patricia Feheley

Director, Feheley Fine Arts TORONTO, ON

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Special Section

Inuit Art Quarterly

42

Fall 2017

Woman with Fish and Kakivak unidentified artist, Nunavik, ca. 1952

NEW ADDRESS: 1444 Sherbrooke Street West Montreal H3G 1K4

www.elcalondon.com | info@elcalondon.com | 514-282-1173

Anniversary

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Special Section

COLLECTING GUIDE

Authenticity The best way to determine the authenticity of a work is to purchase from a reputable source and ask questions.

Some additional safeguards exist; however, many communities and artists do not use or have access to these tools, so don’t dismiss a work simply for not being accompanied by one of these symbols.

Print Chops —

Print chops are one of the main ways to distinguish an original Inuit fine art print from a reproduction. These unique markers were first applied to prints made in Kinngait (Cape Dorset) in the late 1950s. The practice is adapted from Japanese printmaking and was observed and subsequently utilized by Canadian craft officer James Houston, who was instrumental in early Inuit printmaking.

Other communities followed suit, although many independent printmakers, such as Germaine Arnaktauyok, do not utilize chops.

The Canadian Eskimo Arts Council

Baker Lake Print Collection

The Canadian Eskimo Arts Council (CEAC), a southern adjudication body active between 1961 and 1989, included their blind-embossed symbol on the edge of the paper in addition to those of the individual co-ops. Translated, the syllabics read “genuine”, signifying the print was authentic and met the professional standards of the CEAC.

IGLOO TAG TRADEMARK Established in 1958 by the Canadian federal government and now managed by the Inuit Art Foundation, the Igloo Tag Trademark is applied to sculptures, wall hangings, ceramics and other visual art to signify the works were made by Inuit artists. Once only available to major wholesale distributors and territorial governments, the trademark is expanding to be used by all Inuit artists.

Most prints have a basic legend of information—name of the artist and printer, title, year, edition, community name and community chops.

Sandra B. Barz, PhD (Honourary) Former Publisher and Editor for Arts & Culture of the North

For additional information on more than 8,000 prints and detailed accounts of individual artist chops and special collections and releases refer to the Inuit Artists Print Workbooks, Volumes 1 and 3.

Holman Print Collection

Clyde River Print Collection

STUDIO:

STUDIO:

STUDIO:

Sanavik Co-operative

Holman Eskimo Co-operative

Igutaq Group Print Collections

DISTRIBUTOR:

Canadian Arctic Producers

DISTRIBUTOR:

DISTRIBUTOR:

Canadian Arctic Producers

Canadian Arctic Producers

COMMUNITIES:

Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake), NU

Cape Dorset Annual Print Collection

COMMUNITIES:

COMMUNITIES:

Ulukhaktok, NT

Kangiqtugaapik (Clyde River), NU

RELEASE YEARS:

RELEASE YEARS:

1964–66*; 1968*; 1970–77; 1981–88; 1990; 1996*; 1997–99; 2001; 2006–8

1962–63*; 1965–70; 1972–74; 1975/76; 1977; 1979; 1980–81; 1982–89; 1990–2000

Pangnirtung Print Collection

Arctic Quebec Print Collection

RELEASE YEARS:

1981; 1982/83; 1984/85

Povungnituk Print Collection

STUDIO:

STUDIO:

STUDIO:

STUDIO:

Kinngait Studio

Pangnirtung Print Shop (1970–75) Uqqurmiut Inuit Artists Association Print Collections (1976–onward)

Puvirnituq Co-operative

Puvirnituq Co-operative

DISTRIBUTOR:

Dorset Fine Arts/ West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative

DISTRIBUTOR:

DISTRIBUTOR:

La Fédération des coopératives du Nouveau-Québec

La Fédération des coopératives du Nouveau-Québec

COMMUNITIES:

DISTRIBUTOR:

COMMUNITIES:

COMMUNITIES:

Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU

Canadian Arctic Producers

Inukjuak (Port Harrison), QC‡; Ivujivik, QC; Kangiqsualujjuaq, (George River), QC; Kangiqsujuaq (Wakeham Bay), QC; Kangiqsuk (Payne Bay), QC; Kuujjuaraapik (Great Whale River), QC; Salluit (Sugluk), QC

Puvirnituq (Povungnituk), QC

RELEASE YEARS:

COMMUNITIES:

1957–58*; 1959–2017†

Panniqtuuq (Pangnirtung), NU RELEASE YEARS:

1970–71*; 1973; 1975; 1976–80; 1982–88; 1992–2008, 2010–11

RELEASE YEARS:

1961–62*; 1964–66; 1968–70; 1970*; 1972–73; 1975–78; 1980; 1982–86; 1987*; 1988

RELEASE YEARS: * Special or Experimental Collection † Beginning in 1978 there have been numerous special collections and commissions, including additional spring releases. ‡ The community of Inukjuak released a solo collection in 1976

Anniversary

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1972–75; 1973–78*

Special Section

FÉLICITATIONS

IAQ

POUR VOTRE

30

th ANNIVERSARY!

Graphic designer: Frida Franco • Photographer: Paul Dionne

FROM THE 4

3

YEARS OLD, QUEBEC GALERIE BROUSSEAU

Promoting exclusively Canadian Inuit sculptures with our Museums collaborators: Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Québec Musée de l’Homme, Paris, France Musée des Confluences, Lyon, France Conventuel des Jacobins, Toulouse, France Musée de la Miniature, Montélimar, France Musée des beaux-arts, Châlons-en-Champagne, France Fondation Watteville, Martigny, Suisse Musée privé d’art Inuit Brousseau, Québec

And helping every customer, from all over the world in our Gallery, in Old Québec and so encouraging the talented Inuit artists from the Canadian Arctic.

GALERIE D’ART INUIT BROUSSEAU 35, rue Saint-Louis, Old Quebec, Québec, Canada G1R 3Z2 418 694 .1828 www.artinuitbrousseau.ca e-mail:info@artinuit.ca

Luke Anguhadluq. Drum Dance, 1970. Gift of George Swinton in honour of Dr. Ferdinand Eckhardt on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Winnipeg Art Gallery © Public Trustee for Nunavut, Estate of Luke (Luc) Anguhadluq, G-83-107

Every collection tells a story

The Winnipeg Art Gallery began collecting Inuit art in the 1950s. Today it is home to the largest public collection of contemporary Inuit art in the world.

BREAKING GROUND SOON!

COLLECTING GUIDE

Resources

Inuit Art Quarterly Archive: http://iaq.inuitartfoundation.org/ magazine/#archive

PUBLISHER

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

EDITORIAL

This is a small sample of additional books, exhibition texts, magazine articles and online resources to learn more about Inuit art.

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Boyd, Leslie, and Sandra Dyck. Dorset Seen.

Ottawa: Carleton University Art Gallery, 2017.

Expanding Inuit: http://www.expandinginuit.com Hessel, Ingo. Inuit Art: An Introduction.

Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2002.

Igloliorte, Heather, ed. SakKijâjuk: Art and Craft from Nunatsiavut.

With contributions by Jenna Joyce Broomfield, Aimee Chaulk, Christine Lalonde and Barry Pottle. Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions, 2017.

Inuit Art Foundation Inuit Artist Database: iad.inuitartfoundation.org

Executive Director and Publisher: Alysa Procida Editor: Britt Gallpen Assistant Editor and Circulation Manager: John Geoghegan Copy Editor: Simone Wharton Editorial Assistant: Monica Philpott Advertising: Nicholas Wattson Design: Tung Colour: Gas Company Printing: Sonic Print — Programs Coordinator: Camille Usher Inuit Artist Database Program Coordinator: Ashley McLellan Inuit Artist Database Program Officer: Maddy Tripp Inuit Artist Database Program Officer: Helen Olcott Igloo Tag Program Coordinator: Bryan Winters

Isuma Productions: http://www.isuma.tv Kardosh, Judy. Works on Cloth: Imagery by Artists of Baker Lake, Nunavut. Vancouver: Marion Scott Gallery, 2002.

Leroux, Odette, Marion E. Jackson, and Minnie Aodla Freeman, eds. Inuit Women Artists: Voices from Cape Dorset.

San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1996.

McMaster, Gerald, ed. Inuit Modern: The Samuel and Esther Sarick Collection.

With contributions by Dorothy Harley Eber, Bernadette Driscoll Engelstad, Ingo Hessel, Heather Igloliorte, Zacharias Kunuk, Christine Lalonde, Robert McGhee, David Ruben Piqtoukun and John Ralston Saul. Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2011.

FUNDED BY THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA

Wight, Darlene Coward, ed. Creation and Transformation: Defining Moments in Inuit Art. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2012.

ON THE COVER

Janet Kigusiuq Composition c. 2000 Tissue paper 58.4 × 76.2 cm COURTESY FEHELEY FINE ARTS

SPECIAL ISSUE

28.3-4

|

FALL-WINTER 2015

|

$19.95

Q U A R T E R LY

NUNATSIAVUT!

In the Absence of the Co-operative Women of Labrador: Frontrunning Inuit Artists Josephina Kalleo, Garmel Rich, and Nellie Winters Speaking of Materials: Inuit Artists in Conversation

Celebrating 30 years!

I N U I T A R T Q UA R T E R LY

Subscribe for as little as $33 iaq.inuitartfoundation.org

28.2

|

SUMMER 2015

|

$19.95

PINNGUAQ: GAMING AND THE DIGITAL

Inuit Art Quarterly

48

CONNECTIVITY IN THE NORTH

ELISAPEE ISHULUTAQ

VENICE: A PLACE FOR INUIT ART

Fall 2017

Adventures in Inuit Art

NORTHWEST PASSAGE

AUGUST – SEPTEMBER, 2018

ARCTIC SAFARI

AUGUST, 2018

GREENLAND & WILD LABRADOR

SEPTEMBER – OCTOBER, 2018

Adventure Canada’s award-winning small-ship expeditions to the Arctic and sub-Arctic engage, educate, and entertain. We connect people to the land and to each other through immersive experiences in wildlife, culture, art, learning, and fun. Join us.

1.800.363.7566 adventurecanada.com

14 Front Street South, Mississauga, ON L5H 2C4, Canada, TICO Reg# 4001400

Ready to see Inuit Art in a whole new light?

TD Inuit Art Collection celebrates its 50th birthday.

Open to the public, free of charge, seven days a week.

Samonie Toonoo, Hip-Hop Dancer, Cape Dorset, 2007. Image: Toni Hafkenscheid.

Reproduced with the permission of Dorset Fine Arts.

Visit art.td.com or TD Gallery of Inuit Art at 79 Wellington St. West in Toronto. ÂŽ The TD logo and other TD trade-marks are the property of The Toronto-Dominion Bank.

2663-0717

Carvings I Drawings I Prints I Gifts

KIINALIK: THESE SHARP TOOLS Celebrating artistic expression for over 50 years

Thank you to the Inuit Art Quarterly for devoting 30 years to promoting Inuit art and culture!

AD TBD

Bear Drummer, Lukie Airut

by LAAKKULUK WILLIAMSON BATHORY + EVALYN PARRY

canadianarcticproducers.com CAPToronto@arctic.coop

Anniversary

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51

Feature

Padloo Samayualie October 21 - November 11, 2017

www.feheleyfinearts.com gallery@feheleyfinearts.com 65 George Street, Toronto 416 323 1373

COMPOSITION - LITHOGRAPHY STUDIO (detail), 2016, Ink and Coloured Pencil

Inuit Art Quarterly

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Fall 2017

Invitation to Consign FALL'()"&

Inuit Art www.waddingtons.ca Christa Ouimet co@waddingtons.ca !"#-%!&-#"%!

An artist reflects on the rich history that forms the bedrock for Inuit artists today. In tracing the past, both his own and that of the field, Anghik Ruben considers the undeniable challenges and the vast potential ahead for the current and future generations.

by Abraham Anghik Ruben

Where We Go From Here Four Generations and the New Arctic Reality

Namugauniaqpita Tamangat Tisamat Inuusiliit sauniganut tisisimajut ammalu Nutaaq Ukiuqtaqtumi Atuqtauliqtut

Una sanaguaqti takutitijunaqtuq immakalaknit kisuruqpalianiginik ujarasukjuknit Inuit sanaguaqtiginut ublumi. Malik&ugu immakalaknit qanuiliganigit, imminut ammalu sanaqataqtaminut, Anghik Ruben isumagitiaqsimajanga nalunangituq pijaqnilaungituq ammalu anginiqpaamik kiinaujaliurutaujunaqtuq maana ammalu sivuniksatini inuuniaqtunut. titiraqtangit Abraham Anghik Ruben

Our entertainment and education came from the oral tradition, told to us by our parents and elders.

Their hands gave us an awareness of the fragile nature of our survival. —

PREVIOUS SPREAD LEFT

Young Abraham Anghik Ruben at work at his studio in Yellowknife, NT COURTESY NWT ARCHIVES, JAMES JEROME FONDS, N-1987-017

ISIVISIMALAUQTUQ SAUMIA

Makkuktuq Abraham Anghik Ruben sanajuq sanaguaqvikmini Yellowknife, Nunuaqsiaq

PREVIOUS SPREAD RIGHT

TUNISIJUT NUNATSIAQ ITTAQNITAQAQVINGA, JAMES JEROME FONDS, N-1987-017

Abraham Anghik Ruben working at Kipling Gallery, 2015

ISIVISIMALAUQTUQ TALIQPIA

UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED IMAGES COURTESY KIPLING GALLERY

I was born in November 1951, in the Western Arctic near the settlement of Paulatuk in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, NT. My family was nomadic, as were most families at the time.

Even though Christianity had been introduced early on, most Inuit still carried on the traditions and cultural practices of our ancestors. We saw ourselves as part of the land and its daily rhythms, and we paid close attention to our physical, cultural and spiritual needs with the understanding that harmony and balance in all things were integral to our survival.

Days, weeks, months and years were spent in pursuit of game, shelter and fire. Our entertainment and education came from the oral tradition, told to us by our parents and elders. Their hands gave us an awareness of the fragile nature of our survival. We understood the cycles of life from the migration of birds and animals on the land. This early phase of my life gave me the foundation that I would need for my physical, cultural and spiritual survival.

In 1959, at the age of seven, I was sent to a residential school in Inuvik, Inuvialuit Settlement Region, NT, until 1970, along with other children from across the Arctic. The years were, at best, a dark smudge in my life. It was my dark night of the soul. I was physically, mentally and psychologically abused. I became an alcoholic at the age of 16, until I gained sobriety at the age of 36. It took many years, and the love and patience of my wife and family, to heal the damage that had been done. I was just one of many.

My artistic career began in 1971 as a student of Ronald Senungetuk, an artist and resident teacher at the Native Art Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. For the next four years, my training consisted of sculpture, graphics, jewellery and the study of Inuit art history from the early books of art historian George Swinton to those by archaeologist and anthropologist William Fitzhugh. Ron encouraged me to mix traditional materials and techniques with contemporary design to create new dynamic works. After leaving Alaska in 1975, I travelled to Vancouver, BC, and began work for Mr. Lin Kye Lee, a successful businessman and prospector, who gave me an early introduction to stone quarrying and prospecting.

For almost three decades, I assisted Mr. Lee in mining and quarrying for steatite and maintaining his claims, while developing my artistic

Abraham Anghik Ruben sanajuq taikani Kipling Gallery, 2015 KISIANI NALUNAIQSIMAGUTIK AJINGUAT TUNIJANGIT KIPLING GALLERY

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Pinguarusiqtut ammalu iliniarutiqaqtut uqausiinaqmigut, uqautijausimavugut ataatakutinit anaanakutinit ammalu inatuqaqnit. Akgangit tunisisimavut qaijimajutiksanik suraksaraitukuluuniganut nunavut inuunasuaq&uni.

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Inuunikuuvunga November 1951-mi, ukiuqtaqtumi Inuvialuit nunagani nunalik Paulatuuq (Paulatuk). Ilakka itaqnitammariulauqtut, taapkutitut tamaqmik ilagiit taipsumani. Tuksiaqataqniq ukpiqniq ovatinut qaujimajauliqtitaugaluaqmat, tamaqmipaluk Inuit inuusituqaqmiknik atulauqtut taapkutitunaq ilagilauqsimajattitut immakallak. Ovattinnik takuvaktugut ilagijaunitinik nunamut ammalu qautamaat taimanatsianaq, ammalu ovattinik timitinnik aulutsitiaqtugut, piusituqattinnik ammalu taqnitigu pijumajattinik tukisiumalugit tamakkua naliqariitiaqtut ammalu qanuinngitiaqtut sunatuinnaqnik ilainarimagi inuujutiginasuaqtapta.

Ubluit, pinasuarusit, taqqiit ammalu ukiut atuqtut qiniq&utik pinguarutiksamiknik, ikluksamiknik, ikumaksamiknik. Pinguarusiqtut ammalu iliniarutiqaqtut uqausiinaqmigut, uqautijausimavugut ataatakutinit anaanakutinit ammalu inatuqaqnit. Akgangit tunisisimavut qaijimajutiksanik suraksaraitukuluuniganut nunavut inuunasuaq&uni.

Tukisijugut igiravalianiga inuusiq tuquvaliajut inuuvaliajut ilitivigijavut tikipaktut tingmiat ammalu niqjutit nunatini. Tmanna pigialisaaqniq inuusiqmik tunisisimajuq tungaviksanik pitaqariaqaqtuq napaniarama, pisituqaqqaqvigilugu ammalu taqnikut inuujunaqvigillugu.

Taikani 1959, ukiuqaq&unga 7-nik, ovanga, taapkualu asikka nutaqqat nakituinnaq ukiuqtaqtumit, aullaqtitausimavugut iliniariatitauluta Inuuvik-mut, Inuvialuit (Inuvik, NWT), kisiani 1970-mi.

Taipsumani, angilaamik, taaqniqaqtuq inuusinut. Taipsumani “taaqtuq ubnuatitut taqnira”. Timiga, isumaga ammalu isumajusita sukutaulauqtuq. Angajaaqatalauqtunga pigiaq&unga 16-nik ukiuqqaq&unga, angajaaqataruniilauqtunga ukiuqaluq&unga 36-nik.

Akunialuk ukiunik, ammalu nakligigakku ammalu utaqitialauqtuq nuliara ammalu ilakka, maminasuktilnga amisualuknik suraisimagama.

Ovanik suratinira taapnatuunani.

Sanaguaqatalilauqtunga pigiaq&unga 1971-mi iliniaqti&uniga Ronald Senungetuk, sanaguaqti ammalu nunattini ilisasimajuq Native Art Center-mi taikani Iliniaqvikjuaq Alaska Fairbanks.

Tisamanut ukiunut, iliniaq&unga sanaguaqniqmik, qarisaujakkut titiqtugaq&unga, ujamiliuq&unga ammalu iliniaq&unga Inuit sanaguarusiginik ittaqnitanik taapkunangat uqalimaaganit ittaqnitalirijinit George Swinton ammalu Inuusituqalirijiujuq William Fitzhugh. Ron ajaulauqsimajaanga tiliuq&uniga katiqulunigit ittaqnitait ammalu maanalisait sanasimajut nutauniaqmat sanajjusiq. Qimalauqtara Alaska 1975-mi, Vancouver, BC-mut, ammalu iqanaijaluq&unga Mr. Lin Kye Lee, kiinaujaliutsiaqtumik sakminiqutiqalauqtuq ammalu ujaraqniaqtiuluni taapsuma qaujititariulaqutaanga ujaqanik sanaguaraksaqtaaqviksanik ammalu ujarakniaqnikmik. Immaqa 30-nut ukiunut, ikajulauqtara Mr. Lee ijaraksiuqtuq ammalu sanaguaraksaqtaaqvilirijuq ammalu nunataarisimaniqminik pisimainalauqtuq, atautikulu pivaliatitiluni sanaguaqniqmik. Inuujuniilauqaarani 2004-mi, Mr. Lee tunilauqtaaga ovannut ujaraniarunautiganik nunaqutaanik taikani Fraser Valley. Taikani 2014, sanaqatigijakka ovangalu nanisilauqtugut uujaunaqmik aligiijaqmik uqausiriqatalauqsimajanganik, kissiani nanisijumalaurama ovannik nakminiq.

Nanilauqtara, ikpigilauqtara Mr. Lee quviasugajalauqtuq.

Abraham Anghik Ruben (b. 1951 Salt Spring Island) — LEFT

Angatuk 2009 Whalebone 52 × 125 × 34 cm ABOVE

So Much Like a Man 2015 Brazilian steatite 91 × 33.5 × 26 cm BELOW

SAUMIK

Angatuk 2009 Aqviup saunia 52 × 125 × 34 cm QULAANI

Angutauquujittiaqtuq 2015 Ukkusiksaq aqittuq 91 × 33.5 × 26 cm ATAANI

Ronald Senungetuk leading a workshop with Abraham Anghik Ruben at the Ottawa School of Art, 1991

Ronald Senungetuk ilisaijuq iliniaqtut katimalutik piqatigilugu Abraham Anghik Ruben taikani Ottawa School of Art, 1991

PHOTO LARRY OSTROM

AJILIAGA LARRY OSTROM

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Abraham Anghik Ruben — LEFT

Ellesmere 2017 Brazilian steatite 38.5 × 29 × 26 cm CENTRE & RIGHT

Memories: An Ancient Past 2010 Whalebone, Brazilian steatite and BC cedar 176 × 207 × 62 cm — SAUMIK

Ausiutuup Qikiqtanga 2017 Ukkusiksaq aqittuq 38.5 × 29 × 26 cm QITIANI AMMALU TALIQPIK

Iqaumajavut: kiguniviniqput immakalaaluk 2010 Aqviup saunia, Ukusiksaq tisijuq, ammalu British Columbia napaaqtuq 176 × 207 × 62 cm

The early efforts by Inuit at these new arts initiatives took time and patience, but their commitment paid off with the explosion of dynamic works in stone and bone and on paper.

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endeavors. Prior to his passing in 2004, Mr. Lee gifted me the mining claims in the Fraser Valley. In 2014, my crew and I found the source of jade that he had spoken about, but felt I should find on my own.

I found it. I feel that Mr. Lee would be pleased.

Over the past forty years, I have sought to build on the training that I received from my mentor and friend Ron, and I have had the benefit of meeting and working with artists and craftspeople across Canada and internationally. These exchanges have led me to view the world from a multifaceted perspective. Similarly, the tumultuous changes and unpredictable climate shifts that are taking place across the Arctic continue to affect my worldview and professional endeavors, particularly my artistic research into the connection between my ancestors and the Norse Vikings of a thousand years ago.

Significant environmental change was the principle cause that led these two diverse Arctic peoples to Greenland around this time.

As an artist I have attempted to bring this story to life, to mold skin and bones into a new narrative and this search into a long-vanished Arctic world, brings into focus the world we now live in. I understand what took place in the distant past as coming full circle and call these untold stories the “inevitable consequences of contact”. I have always been in awe of the thousand years of artistic talent and inspiration that has come hand in hand with the development of Inuit culture from the Bering Sea and beyond.

As has been documented by Swinton and others, in Canada’s Arctic an artistic naissance took place throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

It is this phase that was one of my early influences as an artist.

I wanted to be able to create works of this power and dynamism.

Today, I can look back and I see the legacy of this artistic blossoming

Inuit Art Quarterly

and the many problems and challenges that artists are facing today as a result. As the Arctic underwent a period of significant uncertainty, starting in the early 1950s, the federal government began its arts and crafts initiatives to provide means of employment to Inuit communities. Individuals like James Houston, Terry Ryan and Gabriel Gély travelled to far-flung camps to see if the ancient hunting skills of Inuit could be harnessed to local materials, including bone, steatite and ivory. To their delight, Inuit were naturals at manipulating local materials because of their skills at creating beautiful everyday objects and crafting elaborate hunting tools and implements.

The early efforts by Inuit at these new arts initiatives took time and patience, but their commitment paid off with the explosion of dynamic works in stone and bone and on paper that made household names of many early artists from numerous Arctic communities.

The participants of these first forays into the new economic initiative required minimal formal instruction and the themes they were asked to portray, including wildlife, hunting and domestic scenes and the spirit world, were subjects of which they had an intimate knowledge. The men and women of this generation had a close understanding of the land; most were nomadic, following the ancient paths of their ancestors. They lived and breathed in the light of myths, stories and legend and held true to the knowledge handed down from generations. They created magnificent works of art, and their distinct artistic expression became an easily identifiable image of Canada on the world stage.

Artists of the second generation, active between the 1960s and 1980s, followed in the footsteps of their parents. Many moved from far-flung camps to start new lives in the small towns and hamlets

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suraaniga taimannailigalilauqnigat taipsumanilu sanaguaqatarumalilauqsimajunga. Sanaqatarumalauqtunga tamatumminga sangiyuujumik ammalu pijunaqtaarilauqtara.

Ublumi, iqaumalugu taipsumaniulauqtuq ammalu manumit tikisimaliqtuq taimanganit sanaguarunaqtut pivaaliqsimaliqtut piruqsimaliqtut ammalu amisut iluangijutut ammalu aksuruqnaktukkuuqtut taapkua sanaguaqtit atuqtagit ublumi taimanauniganut.

Taimalu ukiuqtaqtuq atuqsilaukaktilugu angijunik nalujamiknik qaujimanangitunik, pigiaq&utik 1950 pigialiqtilugu, Kavamatuqaqkut pigiaqtitilauqtut sanaguaqtuliriniqmik ammalu miqsugaliriniqmik iqanaijaqtitilutik Inuit nunaginut. Inutuinait tamakkua James Houston, Terry Ryan ammalu Gabriel GĂŠly qangatavakput nunaliralaanut takujumalutik angunasugusituqait Inuknit atuqtaulutik nunaliknit sanajaulutik, tamakualu sauniit, sanaguaraksait, ammalu kigutiit tugaat. Pijumajanginik, Inuit sanajunatsiakautigilutik ammalu sanalugit nunamiknigaaqtut aaqiksilutik piujumarialuknik ammalu sanaguaqsimatiaqtummarialuknik taapkuatiagulugit sanarititit ammalu ilangit. Pinasuqatalisaaq&utik Inuknit taapkuniga nutaanik sanaguaqataliq&utik akuniuvak&utik ammalu utaqitiariaqaq&utik, kisiani angiqsimanitik atuqniqalilauqtuq amisualuuliq&utik sanajausimajut sanaguaraksat, sauniit ammalu paippaat taapkualu angiragini atigit atuqtaujut maana sanaguaqniqmik pigiaqtitilausimajut immakanniq nakituinnaq Ukiuqtaqtuq nunaginit.

Ukua ilangit taapkunani sivuliulauqtut kiinaujaliurutaulutik, mikijumik ajurisuutijautuinaq&utik ammalu tukiginik taapkua saqitiqujaujut, ilagijaulutik niqjutiit, asivaqsimaniqmik ammalu nunamikni takuqataqtamiknik ammalu taqniqmut pisimajut, ukua pilirijatik qanutuinnaq qaujimagamijjuk. Taapkua angutit ammalu

Taimanganit 40 ukiut, qiniqtunga sanajummalunga tamatumiga ilinialauqtangit ilisaijigilauqtaqnit ammalu piqanarilauqtannit Ron, ammalu ikajuutilauqtuq katilauqsimajakka ammalu sanaqatigilugit sanaguaqtit ammalu sanatiakammarialuit nakituinnaq Kanatamit ammalu silaqjuaqmit. Ukua nunagingitatinut pulaaqatigiiqataqniq takutitisimajuq ovannik nunaqjuavut ajjigiingituutauniganik. Taimannattauq, nalunaqpak&utik asitjiqtut ammalu niriunangitut silaup uquunigata sagusimaliqniga saasimaliqtavut atuliqtavut nanituinnaq ukiuqtaqtumi kajusiyuq aktuilluni ovanga taupturijannik ammalu qaujimajuqjuaguniqmut piliriniaqtapnut, piluaqtumik qaujinasuktapnut sanaguaqnqmik qanuq katinnganiga avataanit ovanga ilagilauqtapnut ammalu Qalunaat Vickings-nut tausanut ukiunut.

Angijumik avativut asitjiqtuq taimanauniganut taapkuat maqqruuk ajigiingitut ukiuqtaqtumi inuit Akukittuq maanauliqtuq. Sanaguaqtiulluga unikadqtausimajunik kisuruqtitinaksukpaktunga saqititinasuk&uga, oviniktaaqtip&ugu ammalu sauniqaliqtip&ugu nutaapmik tukiqaliq&uni ammalu una qiniqniq akuniujumikasiuqayuq Akiuqtaqtup nunaqjuanganit, taapnauliq&uni takvani nunaqjuami nunagiliqtaptini. Tukisijunga qanuq pivalauqmangaata immakkaniq ovattigut utiqtuq ammalu taisuurijavut uqausiulauqsimanginiginik “taimanaujariaqalauramik upaktausimaliqtipluta.�

Kamanaqtuq tausanut ukiunut sanakammarialuit ammalu ajuruniirutigisimajangit taapkunangat atautikut pivaliatitaulutik Inuit piusituqangit tapkangat Ualiniup Tariunga[Bering Sea] ammalu asianit.

Titiraqsimajangit unikaarilugit Swinton ammalu asiginit, Kanataup ukiuqtaqtunga pijumayauniqpaulauqsimajuq sanaguqataliq&utik taimanganit 1950-ni ammalu 1960-ni. Una Anniversary

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Pinasuqatalisaaq&utik Inuknit taapkuniga nutaanik sanaguaqataliq&utik akuniuvak&utik ammalu utaqitiariaqaq&utik, kisiani angiqsimanitik atuqniqalilauqtuq amisualuuliq&utik sanajausimajut sanaguaraksat, sauniit ammalu paippaat.

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aqnait maanauliqtuq tukisiumatsiaqtut nunamik; tamaqmipaluk inulariunikuungmatta, maliktut immakalaknit aqusianginik ilagilauqtangita. Inuusirijangit ammalu aniqsaaqtuqtangit unikaaqtuat, unit, ammalu inuusivinigit ammalu tigumiaqtautsiaqtut qaujimajaujut qaujimajauliqtitauvaktut inuuvalianaiqtunut. Aaqiksiqataqtut piujumarialuknik sananguaq&utik, ammalu ajiungitunik sanajusiqaqtut nalunakitiaq&utik nakingaaqnikuunmagaata Kanatami nunaqjuamut.

Sanaguaqtiulunga piqatigiliqtaani inuusiqaliqtuni, nuqangajunalauqnagalu 1960-nit ammalu 1980-nit, malik&utit ataatakumiknik anaanakumiknik. Amisut nuusimalutik nunaliralaanit inuusiqtaaq&utik nunaqatigiini ammalu Hamlet-ni utiqtaq&utik namutuinnaq Kanataup ukiuqtaqtunganut. Ukua maana inuuliqtut qamugutiaqjuksimajut nunavut; taimanaugaluaqtilugu, katingatsiaqtut taqnimigut ammalu piusituqaqmigut nunamut.

Tukisijut qaiqujariaqaqpakkatigut taqnigit ilagilauqtapta ammalu taqnitigut. Ukua maana inuuliqtut takutitauvut atuqtitauvut maqgruuknik inuusirijaujunik nunaqjuami, kiinaujaliutsiaq&utik, angunasugunaq&utik asivarunaq&utik ammalu iqalugasugunaq&utik aturumajamigut ammalu pijunatsiaq&utik piqutinik ammalu kisuginik nunaliit tunisimajanginik nunagijamikni. Ukua maana inuuliqtut pititauvakmijut ikajuusiaksanik nutaanik, sanaguarutiksanik, kavamakutnit akiliqtauvaktut qangatautigit, niurusiriniq ammalu niuviqtautitiqataqniq angilititijuq tamatumiga kiinaujaliurutaujumik tamatummunga nunaqjuami silaqjuami niuviqtauvaliq&utik. Aaqikpaliaginaq&ugu ataatakumi anaanakumi sanasimajanigit ammalu attakunginit, akkakunginit ammalu attatatsiakunginit anaanatsiakunginit ittukunginit, pigiaqtitisimajut qanuritutuinaqnik sanasimajamiknik.

Taapkua pingajugijaujut inuuliqtut Inuit sanaguaqtit, ukualu sanatiaqniqsauqataluaqtut ammalu aaqitiaqsimalutik taikanganit 1990 tiki&ugu 2010, taapkua Inuit nunaqaqtut ukiuqtaqtuq nunagini.

Ilangit nunaqarumasimajut Qalunaaq nunagani, qanitniqsauniaramik sanaguagaksamiknik, niuvaqpaktuniklu ammalu nunaqjuangat anginiqsaunmat. Nanisimajavut amisuit sanajunaqsiqataqtut kisutuinaqnik ammalu tamauna saqijuaarunaqtut sanatiaqsimajut ammalu aaqiksimajusiriqataqtangit. Ukiuqtaqtumi pinasuarusiup nunguani asivaqsimavaktut ammalu iqalugasugiaqpaktut. Ilagiilimat katingavaktut nutaanguriaqti&ugu piqanariniqtik, atuq&ugu angunasukviqatiaqtuq nunangat, unikaarikanniq&ugit ammalu tunilugit ittaqnisait qaujimajaujutuqait siviniksatini inuuniaqtunut.

Pingasuiq&utik nunajuaqmiknit piiqtausimajut maliktiginiaqtamiknit inagiqtiksamiknit, tauttuqaqtitaugatik qanuq katinganiqmiknut sivulirilauqtamiknut, maana inuuliqtut sanaguaqtiit pijaqnigitumik tijaksaqaqtut sanalutik sanaguaqsimajunik qanuutiginiganik ajiungituuniq,sanajunnaqtut ammalu ajungitiaqtut taapkutitut ataatakumititut anaanakumititut ammalu ataatatsiakumititut anaanatsiakumititut. Amisut ikpigusuktut sanajariaqaqmagaat tingmiaguanik, niqjutinguanik ammalu taqniguanik qaujimangitiaraluarutit aaqigasuktamiknik. Ukua sanaguanik niuviqpaktut

Abraham Anghik Ruben — ABOVE & LEFT

Freya 2016 Brazilian steatite 98 × 61 × 23 cm — QULAANI AMMALU SAUMIANI

Freya 2016 Ukkusiksaq aqittuq 98 × 61 × 23 cm

springing up across Canada’s Arctic. This generation was one step removed from the land; however, they were still tied spiritually and culturally to the land. They understood the calling of the spirits of their ancestors and the spirit realm. This generation had exposure to both worlds, with secure incomes, the ability to hunt and fish as they chose and access to the goods and amenities provided by the communities they lived in. This generation also received the benefits of new materials, art supplies, government-sponsored shipping, marketing and sales ventures that expanded the whole industry into international markets. Building on the works of their parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents, they introduced a dynamic range of artworks.

The third generation of Inuit artists, whose main artistic formation and output was from the 1990s to 2010s, is made up of those individuals who by and large live in established Arctic communities. Some have chosen to live in the South, closer to materials, markets and the broader world. Many are finding their artistic expression in a variety of media and through exposure to the artistic forms and styles of their contemporaries. In the North, they are weekend hunters and fisherman. Whole families gather to renew old friendships, sharing in the rich harvest of the land, the retelling of stories and passing on ancient knowledge to future generations. Three times removed from the world of their predecessors, with no visible direct links to their ancestral ways, this generation of artists has the difficult task of creating works of art comparable to the dynamism, power and caliber of that of their parents and grandparents. Many feel they must create images of

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The accelerated pace of change in the North brings with it great challenges.

Those most at risk are the children who must bear the brunt of the shifting climate; this is their future.

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answers and leadership in this area, but their efforts sometimes fall short of what is needed to ensure the survival of arts in the North.

Over and above the daily concerns of today’s artist is the issue of a changing Arctic climate and the dramatic effects it is having on local communities. The accelerated pace of change in the North brings with it great challenges. Those most at risk are the children who must bear the brunt of the shifting climate; this is their future.

As an artist and an Inuvialuit entrepreneur, I am making plans for the establishment of an Arctic Children’s Fund that will attempt to tackle the issues facing our children today. We must find solutions to the far-reaching effects of alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide and food insecurity by focusing on education and the preservation of culture through language and the arts. I believe we must take action now as we face a multitude of problems with limited resources.

Artists, in particular, must see and respond to this new Arctic reality, perhaps by choosing to become social and cultural activists using their changing environment as themes in their work. For those who follow this path, I can offer a viable solution to ensure the survival of Inuit cultural, spiritual and material traditions through artistic expression. This solution is one that was offered to me as a young man under Ron’s tutelage and requires that art centres be set up in Nunavut and elsewhere in the North to provide artists with opportunities for multidisciplinary programs with a focus on formal training in the contemporary arts. The disciplines would include sculpture, painting, drawing, graphics, fine crafts and an emphasis on traditional and contemporary design. Such spaces could partner with existing institutions in the North to allow artists the choice of where to study as currently most are forced to travel south for this level of comprehensive training. Crucial to the success of this approach is the marrying of technical training with a much deeper aesthetic rooted in our cultural and spiritual past.

I believe immersing the prospective artist in classical training will enable the individual to develop skills and new ways of viewing their cultural, material and spiritual traditions. Providing young artists with a range of tools will prepare them to greet expanding markets as the Northwest Passage welcomes increasing numbers of visitors.

With this grounding, artists will find new forms of expressions in an ever-changing Arctic world. In many ways it feels like a new beginning, so let’s see what we can do.

birds, animals and spirits without the intimate firsthand experience of their subject matter. The art dealers and market make unreasonable demands on these artists to create great works without the knowledge of the past, which in turn hinders them from breaking away from these long-established practices and entrenched marketing models.

We come now to the fourth generation of Inuit artists working today, a group that is some 50 years or more removed from their grandparents, who first saw the flowering of a new dynamic art form.

This present generation must find artistic expression amidst the constant noise and electronic drabble of their daily lives. With the added weight of substance, sexual and physical abuse, suicide and cultural disconnect, an artist living in the North today must be thickskinned, innovative and resilient to make a go of it. Most are faced with uncertain futures and many choose to take on stable jobs, rather than invest in a creative pursuit with no guarantee. Most troubling, however, is the lack of training or skills to become exemplary. Many of these young artists live in cultural and spiritual limbo, without an intimate understanding of the land and its creatures or the mythology of the shamanic world. The past is distant and removed, the present is demanding and offers little in providing answers and viable future pathways for an artist to pursue productive and inspiring lives aren’t always direct. The co-ops and other institutions provide some

Abraham Anghik Ruben —

Passage of Spirits 2011 Whalebone, Brazilian steatite and BC cedar 56.5 × 96 × 32 cm —

Inuujuniiqsimajut Taqnigit 2011 Aqviup saunia, Ukusiksaq aqittuq, ammalu British Columbia napaaqtuq 56.5 × 96 × 32 cm

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Abraham Anghik Ruben speaks to the crowd at the opening of Out of Tradition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1989 COURTESY WINNIPEG ART GALLERY

Abraham Anghik Ruben uqalaktuq inugianimatuiqtilugu Ittaqnitanit taikani Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1989 TUNISIJUQ WINNIPEG ART GALLERY

ammalu niurusiriniqmut ajuqnaqtualuknik pijumasuugummata taapkunangat sanaguasuunit sanaqulugit sanatiaqlutik qaujimangitamiknik kigunirilauqtattinit, taimalu qimagutijunnailisuut taapkunangat akuniuliraagata sanajusiriqaqtaqtangit ammalu asitjijaangitunik niurusirijutingit.

Tikiutisimaliratta maana tisamagijangit inuusiujunit Inuit sanaguaqtigit sanaqataqtut ublumi, taapkua immaqaa 50 ukiunik akuniuniqsamikluuniit ataatatiakumikniituniiqtut anaanatsiakumikniituniiqtut, taapkualu takujariuqsimajut nunaqqanik sanaguaqsimajunik. Ukua tarmac ukiuliit nanisijariakaramik sanaguaqsimatsiaqtunik aaqiksisimajut, nipiqainaqtuni ammalu niuqtuqpalitijunit qatamaat tusaajatik. Uqumaittunik ilajausimalutik angajaaqataramik, qunujuqniaqtausimagamik, ammalu timigitigut aaniqsiqtauvakkamik ammalu immikniiqataqtut ammalu piusituqaqmiknut atajunniiramik, sanaguaqti nunaqaruni ukiuqtaqtumi ublumi aaniqsaraigiluni sakluqitaujumanatik, nutaanik sanaqataliqlutik ammalu suraktaukautigijaajunniiramiktaimana kajusinasuaq&utik.

Tamaqmitsiakasak saattisimajut qaujimanatik qanuq sivuniksaqaqniaqmagaamiknik ammalu amisut iqanaijaqniqsaulutik, qakigasuarutiginagu sanatiarunaqnitik. Akaugingilarali, taimanaugaluaqmat, pijariuqsatitausimangiliaqmata obvaluuniit ajuruniiqsajaulutik sanajutiksanginut kiguvaaliurutigilugu.

Amisut ukua makkuktut sanaguaqtiit inuusiqaqtut piusituqaqnik ammalu taqniliriniqmik naluplutik, tukisiumatitautsiangikutik nunamik mammalu niqjutiginnik kisunginik nunaup obvaluuniit taimanaujusirilauqtanginik agakuqaqataqtilugu. Kigunirilautavut immaqnitauluaq&uni ammalu piiqtausimatsiamarik&uni, maanauliqtuq pijumagmata ammalu kiujautsiaqatangimata ammalu atuutiqaqtunik sivuniksanganut aqutiliurutijausimangimata sanaguaqtiit pivaliatitiviksanginik ammalu inuusiqatsiaqtitiniq takvaukautigivangimat. Ukua Co-op ammalu asingit kiusivaktuugaluat ammalu ajungilaagulutik tamakkunuga, kisiani pilirinasuknigit atuutiqaratik pijaujariaqaqtunut kajusiniaqmat sanaguaqtuliriniq Ukiuqtaqtumi.

Asinggit ammalu tikiutisimangitut isumaaluutinggit ublumi sananguaqtit pijutiqaqmata asitjiqpalianiganik Ukiuqtaqtuq silagata qaniupalianagata asitjiqniganut ammalu angijumik aktuiniganut nunaqatigiinut nunalikni. Sukalijumik asitjiqpalianiga Ukiuqtaqtuq amisunik aksurunaqtukkuuqtitivut. Ataqnalaat nutaqqat atuqniaqmata silo uquusivalianagata taimanautitaginik; tamatja sivuniksangit.

Sanaguaqtiulunga Inuvialukmiutaulunga nagminiqaq&unga, Anniversary

paqnaivunga saqitijumalunga Ukiuqtaqtuq Nutarakuluknut Kiinaujaksanginik atuqtauniaqtuq aaqiksimajutauluni pijutauliqtunut saasimaniaqtangit qitunqgatta ublumi. Nanisijariakaktugut aaqiksimajutiksanik aktuqtausimajunut immialukmut, angajaaluutinut, immikniiqataqtunit ammalu niqiksaqatsiaqniarata aulutilugit iliniaqniq ammalu asiutititailiniq piusituqattinik tamauna uqausittigut ammalu sanaguaqnikkut. Ukpirusuktunga pilirijariaqaliratta maanna saatitimatilluta ajingiigituutinik amisunik iluangijutinik akajuutiksaqtaqangitumi.

Sananguaqtiit, piliaqtumik, takujariaqaqtut ammalu kiusilutik tamatummunga nut Ukiuqtaqtuq atuliqtangat, immaqaa niruaqsimalutik inuusilirijiulutik ammalu piusituqalirijiulutik atuqlugit asitjiqpaliajut avativut tukigilugu sanajamiknut. Taapkuniga malitsiaqtunut sivulirilauqtaptinik, tunisijunaqtunga atuutiqaqtumik aaqigutiksanut nuguniangimat kajusiniaqmat Inuit piusituqanga, taqnigat ammalu kisugilauqtanginik tamauna sanaguaqlugit saqitilugit. Una aaqiutijunnaqtuq tunisimajanga ovannut makkuktuulunga isumatarilauqtara Senungetuk ammalu piqujivugut sanagauqviknik ikluliuqlutik Nunavummi ammalu nanituinnaq iniqaqniaqmatta sanaguaqtiit piviqaqtitaulutik qanuritutuinnaqnik pilirititijutiksanginik aulutijaulutik iliniaqtitiniq sanaguariuqsaniqmik.

Iliniaqtitijutaulutik sanaguaqniq, titiqtugaqnik, titiraujaqnik, miqsugaliriniq ammalu aulutijaulutik piusituqangit ammalu maanalisait sanajunaqtangit. Tamakkua inigijaujunaqtut pinasuaqatiqaqlutik maanaujuq atuqtaujunik Ukiuqtaqtumi ajunginiaqmatta sanaguaqtiit iliniarumajamiknik taimali maanaujuq kisianiuvakmat Qalunaat nunaganut qaulaq&utik pijariuqsattitautiaqniaramik. Pimmariujut kajusittianiaqlutik taimana pigiarutiqaqluni katitilugit kisulirijunaqsititiniq sanarutikut ataniqsaulutik piusituqattinnut ammalu taqnirilauqtappinut.

Ukpirusuktunga pilirijumaliqtitiluta sanaguaqtiujunaqniqmik kiinaujaliurutigitsiaqlugu pijariuqsatilugit kinatuinnaq sanajunaqsitilugit ammalu nutaanik qaujijaroiuqtilugit piusituqanginik, kisuliaksanik ammalu taqnilirinituqaqmik ammalu tunilugit makkuktut sanaguaqtiit qanuritutuinnaqnik sanaguarutiksanginik atuutiqaqniaqmata angilivaliajunut niuviqatarumajunut tamale aqutauniamatta Sullualuk Ualiniqmit Qikiqtaalukmut [Northwest Passage] atuqtauniaqmat pulaariatut unuqsilutik. Taapsumiga tunngajutiqarutik, sanaguaqtiit nanisijunaqtut nutaanik pigiarutiksamiknik pigialisaaqlutik, atii pilirijunaqtaptinik aaqiksilauqta.

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Where We Go From Here

Tim Pitsiulak’s masterful drawings of the hunt have roots that run deep. They are the result of generations of knowledge of the land and lifelong experience as a hunter. They are the inheritor of Niviaksiak’s powerful silhouetted figure standing in front of a seal hole moments before a kill and Kananginak Pootoogook’s scenes that celebrate a successful walrus hunt. Pitsiulak was not the first hunter-artist, but his large-format drawings and masterful prints have solidified his legacy for generations to come.

by Andrew Hunter

Tim Pitsiulak (1967–2016) was born in Kimmirut, NU, and began drawing as a child. Though he experimented with sculpture and trained in making jewellery at Arctic College, he excelled in graphic arts. His first print, Caribou Migration, was released in the Cape Dorset Annual Print Collection in 2005, only a few years after moving from Kimmirut to Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU. The detailed print showing a family of caribou bounding across the page marked the beginning of a successful career in the medium. In the 2016 collection, the final print collection Pitsiulak saw before he passed away that year, nine of his prints were included.

Though he is undeniably one of the most successful print artists in recent years, Pitsiulak’s drawings have garnered him the most acclaim. Throughout the course of his career, he made detailed works documenting climate change researchers in the North, powerful and intricate drawings of wildlife, intimate self-portraits and memorable scenes of the hunt, often sourced from his own photographs. Some of his most compelling drawings are of machinery: a Ski-Doo on its side being repaired, bulldozers, forklifts, the cockpit of an airplane, all rendered with incredible detail—down to serial numbers and tire treads. More recently, he had been experimenting with transcendent northern landscapes and monumental drawings of icebergs.

In the fall of 2016, curator Andrew Hunter visited Kinngait to begin work on a large scale commission with the artist for the exhibition Every. Now. Then: Reframing Nationhood currently on view at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Sadly, before the project could be completed Pitsiulak passed away in December 2016.

In this evocative and exploratory first person account, a colleague and friend weaves a complex and intimate portrait of the artist, hunter, father and community pillar through a selection of images and their attendant stories.

Tim Pitsiulak (1967–2016 Kinngait) — PREVIOUS SPREAD

Tugaaliit (Tusked Whales) 2015 Coloured pencil and graphite 76 × 111.5 cm ALL ARTWORKS REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION DORSET FINE ARTS

EET-EEPOW, the Legend (2014). I imagine this figure surging across the landscape, multiple arms reaching out and three-fingered hands pawing at the ground as powerful legs push them forward. I don’t know who they are, what their story is or how they’ve chosen the path that we now follow. We ride along, following them up and over hills, down to the beach and then out onto the frozen sea. We are heading for a massive formation, to meet a visitor who has drifted in from the east and out of the high North Atlantic, something unexpected and rare. It is below -50 and the wind is strong, doubled by the speed of our progress on Tim Pitsiulak’s new snowmobile. As we rapidly approach the mammoth iceberg, it rises up, stretches and expands, as if a leviathan has breached the surface to slowly arch its back, before diving deep again. He would show me stories of what lies beneath.

As we draw closer, Eet-Eepow disappears behind the iceberg that we now begin to slowly circle. The illusion of its animism passes, and I now read it as a static, solid form, more geology than cetacean.

The upper section is raked by vertical striations and deep fissures, and below by horizontal layers, time accumulating at its base. Everything is blue: the fleeting clear sections of sky, the thick clouds fading to fog, the hard surface that shatters as we pass over it, the machine that carries us. The darkest blues lie within the iceberg, encased in ancient strata, while the boldest liquid cerulean shimmers in the open pool that haloes the base, as if the light does not come from the sun, but

BELOW

Iceberg 2016 Oil stick 121.9 × 238.8 cm COURTESY FEHELEY FINE ARTS

Inuit Art Quarterly

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BELOW

EET-EEPOW, the Legend 2014 Coloured pencil and graphite 76.2 × 111.8 cm ART GALLERY OF ONTARIO

ABOVE

Success at Last 2014 Coloured pencil and graphite 76.2 × 111.8 cm © DORSET FINE ARTS

— Tim Pitsiulak, the hunter, sees his prey as immortal. His intimate knowledge of and deep respect for the living things of the Arctic is evidenced in his depictions of wildlife, particularly those of the sea.

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emanates from within the earth. I’m walking towards the open water, drawn to the glow. Tim warns me away. He would show me stories of what lies beneath.

We ride around the back of the iceberg; it keeps changing, depending on the angle of view, as if it were composed of four different structures. We pick up Eet-Eepow’s trail again, seeing them in the far distance heading back to shore. A cloud of snow trails them, churned up as they race to the beach, only to disappear again over the hill and back to town. Tim pulls the snowmobile up onto the beach, just past a small open boat, its outboard motor still angled up off the stern, waiting for the spring breakup. He walks away from me, and his path follows the long curve of a spine, the blades of numerous vertebrae still aligned, just peaking above the snow. He tells me of the day of the hunt; the community gathered on the beach to butcher the whale, to celebrate, to share the meat and savour the muktuk. It’s a scene that was captured by his friend Ohotaq Mikkigak (1936–2014) in his 2009 drawing Composition (Dissecting a Whale).

In the image, Mikkigak’s whale lies lifeless, its energy passing to the community who gathers to harvest its flesh. In contrast, Tim’s whales remain alive, their skin embossed with the traces of a deep culture; Tim Pitsiulak, the hunter, sees his prey as immortal. His intimate knowledge of and deep respect for the living things of the Arctic is evidenced in his depictions of wildlife, particularly those of the sea, including bowhead whales, belugas, walrus and seals. Their forms are rendered with such care as to create striking proximities.

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Tim Pitsiulak: Stories of What Lies Beneath

Beings, both those alive or dead, inanimate or soon to be animate, are revealed by the artist. Through his drawings, Tim captured the human in the animal, and, in turn, the living presence—that wild animal energy—stored within the heavy machinery that now punctuates the community. We return to town just as the sun is setting, passing construction crews and machinery on the newly flattened hilltop, their trucks idling in the cold, their headlights illuminating the level ground. The outline of a building is becoming discernible in the rows of steel pilings being driven into the rock.

Later in the darkness at 3 AM, I will climb back up the hill to observe another of Tim’s creatures at work.

The industrial machines have become a distinct species in this new landscape—earthmovers, road graders, rock drills—predatory beasts of construction and extraction. Since childhood, Tim has observed and drawn them, as they move about the town, sometimes noisily active, at other times waiting. Now, in pre-dawn darkness, Canadrill (2015) is probing; it moves like a chained beast. I think of circus elephants, submissive, lumbering and lurching along in jerks and spasms. The cables, draped and looped, swing as trunks. Then it crawls: its two treads independently rolling over the uneven ground.

All those alien visions of insects and cephalopods and crustacean exoskeletons have surfaced in our technology. It grinds and pounds down some of the oldest rock on the planet, creating a mélange of rust red, crystal and charcoal black. Under a harsh spotlight, a burly figure clad in grey guides the beast about the site as the beautiful hues of hard ground are reduced to uniform grey powder. The drill pushes deeper down against the rock, a giant molar. The drill probes deeper, striking a nerve.

Inuit Art Quarterly

The drill stops and the assistants in the hard hats and fluorescent orange vests gather round and gaze into the hole. They blast it clean with a high-pressure air hose. Everything is tethered to the compressor that lingers in the shadows behind the toolshed. A bell rings—it is Sunday morning—but not from the church; a hammer strikes the steel piling that will be driven into the freshly drilled hole. A man strikes it with a sledgehammer, vibrating off the ice and snow that have accumulated on the stack of rods. A separate machine (a cat, a caterpillar?) raises and swings the pipe across the site into position, then lifts it high, vertical and level, to be dropped into the ground, revealing the true depth of the drill’s progress as half the twenty-foot pipe vanishes into the earth. The hole is now packed with concrete to block water from entering, as water would turn quickly to ice and push the pipe skyward.

If this were a sci-fi film, this would be the scene of the first reveal.

The drill would hit something unexpected, ominous and unknown below the surface. After a pregnant pause, as the camera moved in, the entity would declare its presence with conviction, violently and conclusively or, alternatively, would wait until the crew have left and, with the site abandoned, slowly emerge—[Cut to black]. Watching the crew assemble this morning, before a dawn that is coming later and later, I watch as the engines fire up and the Canadrill begins to shake, then awkwardly shimmy across the ground to a new spot, defined by GPS, adjacent to a precise row of tall pipes that have been chopped to equal heights with the aid of a laser level. Just a hint of permanent architecture rising, the new Kenojuak Cultural Centre and Print Shop, that will house the studio intended for Tim, Shuvinai Ashoona, RCA, and a new generation of artists. Built in honour of his aunt, Kenojuak

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Tim would not tell you things, he would show you things, point you in a direction and shrug when you asked for explanations; his job was to make art, not explain it to you.

—

Tim Pitsiulak — LEFT

Canadrill 2015 Black porous-point pen, coloured pencil and graphite 124.5 × 274.3 cm ART GALLERY OF ONTARIO

RIGHT

Butchering an Udjuk 2013 Coloured pencil and ink 127 × 144.8 cm COURTESY FEHELEY FINE ARTS

Ashevak, CC, ON, RCA (1927–2013)—who “was the greatest,” he always said with pride—it is a facility he will not live to see.

The last time I saw Tim was in November of 2016 at Kinngait; the last time we spoke was on my birthday, December 18, 2016.

He was developing a new image for an ambitious project for the front of the Art Gallery of Ontario, and we had begun planning an exhibition focused on Ashevak. Back in November, Tim seemed subdued, less the joker I had come to know. He seemed more contemplative as he constantly gazed out on the harbour, waiting for the whales to come. He’d had his nets set for weeks with no luck.

He’d had success with the bear hunt, the hide of a recently shot specimen splayed out on a stretcher outside of the house he shared with his wife, Mary, his youngest daughters and adopted granddaughter. I remember watching from atop the hill, looking out to the far shore where Tim’s nets lingered awaiting beluga and up the hill to the dump where the polar bears often sleep amongst the remains of appliances and where there is a snowmobile graveyard, just beyond the cemetery where Ashevak is buried and where Annie Pootoogook (1969–2016) had recently been laid to rest. Scanning the town from the gazebo, I follow the school bus as it rolls downhill from the east, stopping in the low ground to collect a cluster of neighbours’ kids. I look back to see Tim on the porch of his house, puffing on a cigarette, still gazing out across the harbour, waiting, still waiting. The bear’s hide next to him reminding me of another visit, a year earlier in January, when he sent me out onto the harbour ice to watch his nephew butcher his first bear.

That day on the ice, a small crowd gathered as Tim’s nephew followed his father’s directions on how to butcher the carcass of the

Anniversary

bear. He drew a line across the chest from forepaw to forepaw, then down the centre from throat to scrotum. The knife newly sharpened, he set to work with a surgeon’s precision. The skin peeled back, the blood seeped out onto the ground to be spread, in expanding circles, by the boots of those gathered to help. The next morning, I walked back out onto the ice alone, and as I approached the remains of the carcass I passed over the footprints of foxes and ravens who had picked away at the remains. No one touched the entrails, still arranged as they had been the previous afternoon by an older man using a sharp metal hook attached to the end of a hockey stick. A raven approached, circling me warily. We stared each other down.

Tim would not tell you things, he would show you things, point you in a direction and shrug when you asked for explanations; his job was to make art, not explain it to you. “Why?” he would mock me.

“Always ‘why’. So many questions!” And he’d look back at his drawing, or out the window of the studio, shaking his head. Why? Ohotaq Mikkigak, Itee Pootoogook (1951–2014), Jutai Toonoo (1959–2015) and Annie Pootoogook; I never imagined we would also lose Tim so soon. The planes that Pudlo Pudlat (1916–1992) once saw as brightly coloured hybrids of birds, bugs and alien timemachines, rainbow-striped and drawing people skyward, would fail Tim. Like so much new technology brought to the North, too often for the benefit of outsiders, it failed in its promise.

I imagine that figure once again, moving out over the ice, Eet-Eepow, the legend. I will never know what this figure meant to Tim, what his version of their story was, but in the multiple sets of powerful limbs, I see the embodiment of his many strengths: artist, hunter, husband, father, grandfather and friend.

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Tim Pitsiulak: Stories of What Lies Beneath

Celebrating 30 Years of Supporting Inuit Artists

by Alysa Procida

Starting on June 3, 2017, the Inuit Art Foundation began its 30th anniversary celebrations by announcing a year-long calendar of program launches, events and a special issue of the Inuit Art Quarterly that cement the Foundation’s renewed strategic priorities. Sometimes called Ikayuktit (Helpers) in Inuktut, everyone who has worked here over the years has been unfailingly committed to helping Inuit artists expand their artistic practices, improve working conditions for artists in the North and help increase their visibility around the globe. Though the Foundation’s approach to achieving these goals has changed over time, these central tenants have remained firm.

The IAF formed in the late 1980s in a period of critical transition in the Inuit art world. The market had not yet fully recovered from the recession several years earlier and artists and distributors were struggling. The unfortunate closing of Sandra Barz’s Arts and Culture of the North after 26 issues in 1984 was a particular blow and left Inuit art enthusiasts with few options for information on the art form.

At the same time, the Canadian Eskimo Arts Council (CEAC) was nearing the end of its tenure as an advisory body, primarily know for adjudicating Inuit prints.

In response, the Arts and Crafts Liaison Committee of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND; now Indigenous and Northern Affairs, or INAC) commissioned two studies: one in 1984, at the request of Canadian Arctic Producers

by Roy MacSkimming on the feasibility of launching an Inuit art newsletter and one in 1985, at the request of Tuttavik¹ by Marybelle Mitchell (then Myers) on the feasibility of an Inuit art-focused foundation. In October 1985, DIAND provided $50,000 in seed money to the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative’s trading partner Kinngait Press to launch the Inuit Art Quarterly (IAQ) in April 1986.

The inaugural issue’s success and clear importance resulted in further investments to facilitate its publishing.

In order to sustain the IAQ and respond to the needs outlined in Mitchell’s study, she and the inaugural Editorial Board incorporated the Inuit Art Foundation in 1987. With the closure of the CEAC in 1989, the IAF became a core-funded organization with INAC and, its future now secure, began to establish strategic priorities. In the initial years, these were primarily around promoting Inuit art to a southern audience.

However, a meeting of Inuit artists in Ottawa, ON, in 1990 proved to be a key turning point in the IAF’s history: after this needs-based assessment, the IAF quickly began expanding its programming to include extensive professional development workshops and providing “kickstart” grants for the purchasing of tools or assistance in obtaining quarrying stone through the newly-formed Inuit Artists’ College; training Inuit in arts administration and curation through the Cultural Industries Training Program, starting in 1995; and organizing live events, exhibitions and artistic exchanges to provide a unique forum for artists to meet, exchange ideas and promote themselves. The IAF filled critical gaps for Inuit throughout Canada: one of the first programming investments the Foundation made was to canvas artists throughout Nunatsiavut on their needs and organize a carving workshop in Nain in response, which had long been neglected by the rest of the Inuit art world.

Similarly, the IAF focused on providing critical health and safety training for artists. The Sananguaqatiit comic book series, as well as many articles in the Inuit Artist Supplement to the IAQ focused on ensuring artists were no longer unwittingly sacrificing their health for their careers. Though supporting carvers was a key focus of the IAF’s early programming, the scope of the IAF’s support extended to women’s sewing groups, printmakers and many other disciplines. In 2000, the IAF organized two artist residencies for Nunavik artists at Kinngait Studios in Kinnagit (Cape Dorset), NU, while the IAF showcased Arctic fashions, film, performance and other media at its first Qaggiq in 1995.

The Foundation’s focus shifted in the mid-2000s based on a large-scale survey of 100 artists from across Inuit Nunangat, coupled with a fluctuating funding landscape that made such large-scale events and extensive travel impossible. Instead, the IAF focused on investing its resources into leveraging the emerging opportunities afforded by the internet to reach as many people as possible. The Inuit Artist’s College was succeeded by the National Inuit Artists’ College, which published a wide variety of artist resources on a centralized website, and the IAF began producing virtual exhibitions of Inuit art to ensure the public’s access. Through it all, the IAQ continued to be the only constant resource for Inuit artists’ work and voices, as well as a site that nurtured thoughtful criticism about the art form and championed new artists and media.

Despite these important activities, the IAF’s unstable funding had become untenable enough that it announced its unexpected closure on March 2, 2012. The blow was felt so profoundly among artists, collectors, curators, gallerists and other supporters that an emergency meeting of 31 stakeholders was called on April 16 to discuss options for saving the organization. Thanks to the extraordinary support from the field, the IAF Board formally voted to resume operations in December of that year.

Since then, the IAF has renewed its focus on advocating for the needs of artists throughout Inuit Nunangat and Southern Canada, informed by an extensive stakeholder consultation tour.

In addition to the beloved IAQ, the IAF has also taken responsibility for administering the Igloo Tag Trademark to provide market support and protections for artists, assists with copyright and is proud to launch its Inuit Artist Database, as well as running the Virginia J. Watt and Dorothy Stillwell Award, Kenojuak Ashevak Memorial Fund and numerous other professional development activities.

In researching our rich archive in preparation for this issue, I have been continually struck by how far-reaching, profound and personal the Foundation’s programs have been over the years.

Here, we provide a glimpse into some of the most exciting, fun and significant moments from the past. Although there is no way to encapsulate the IAF’s true reach and impact in the space of a few pages, I hope you enjoy reliving these memories with us and look forward, as I do, to our next thirty years.

NOTE

To see an extended timeline of IAF activities, visit us at: inuitartfoundation.org/anniversary

Anniversary

¹ Tuttavik was a collaborative art wholesaling partnership between Arctic Co-operatives Limited and La Fédération des coopératives du NouveauQuébec, located in Mississauga, ON.

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Celebrating 30 Years of Supporting Inuit Artists

↓

1992

1991

1986

Two artists experiment with power tools while Gilbert Hay looks on, Nain, 1991

1992: The IAF compiles Library Boxes that include instructional videos, back issues of the IAQ, art posters, heath and safety information and tool and art supply catalogues, which are shipped to the Agiarqtiit Carvers Society in Kimmirut, Hopedale, the Iluayummiut Artists Association in Kinngait, Ivujuvik, the Kinqunik Artists’ Society in Uqsuqtuuq (Gjoa Haven), Makkovik, Nain, the Rankin Inlet Art Society, Tuktoyaktuk, the Uqqurmiut Centre for Arts and Crafts in Panniqtuuq (Pangnirtung), and the Yellowknife Correctional Centre.

In 1994, additional boxes are sent to Kugaaruk (Pelly Bay) and Umiujaq.

1986: The first issue of the Inuit Art Quarterly is published, under the supervision of a volunteer Editorial Advisory Committee: Michael Bell, Helga Goetz, Avrom Isaacs, Roy MacSkimming, Terry Ryan, Samuel Sarick and Francis Sparshott.

1991: The IAF hires Dinah Andersen to canvas Nunatsiavut communities regarding their specific needs and encourage the development of local artist associations. This same year, the IAF provides carvers in Nain a $1,500 grant to purchase power tools.

This is followed by two Power Tool Workshops, taught by Mattiusi Iyaituk and Charlie Kogvik; the first focuses on how to use the new tools and the second on developing economic self-sufficiency. Participants include Gilbert Hay, Philip Hunter, Sam Ikkusek, Adam Lidd, Michael Massie, Eli Merkuratsuk, William Nochasak, David Terriak and John Terriak.

→

Charlie Kogvik and an unidentified woman pack Library Boxes with videotapes and books before they go north, 1992

Oviloo Tunnillie participates in a carving workshop at the Ottawa School of Art, 1992 ↓

↑

BACK: Toonoo Sharky,

Uriash Puqiqnak, unidentified woman, Nick Sikkuark FRONT: Charlie Kogvik, Joseph Suqsluk, and Mattiusi Iyaituk, Ottawa, 1991

Inuit Art Quarterly

1992: The IAF runs two modules of a quarrying and carving workshop for sculptors. The first takes place in Vermont and Ottawa, where Davidee Akpalialuk, Timiusie Kooneeliusie, Mattoo Michael, Jukie Nookiguak, Taqialuq Nuna, Eyesiak Padluq, and Jacoposie Tiglik learn quarrying techniques. In the second, Davidee Akpalialuk, Okpik Pitseolak, Jerry Semigak, Theresa Sivanertok, Lizzie Sivuarapik and Oviloo Tunnillie participate in carving workshops at the Ottawa School of Art.

1991: The IAF founds the Inuit Artists’ College, a “college without walls”, providing training and capacitybuilding opportunities to Inuit. Its inaugural workshop is offered in partnership with the Ottawa School of Art. Led by Abraham Anghik Ruben and Ronald Senungetuk, participants Mattiusi Iyaituk, Charlie Kogvik, Eli Merkuratsuk, Uriash Puqiqnak, Toonoo Sharky, Nick Sikkuark, and Joseph Suqsluk learn sculpting techniques and tour local museums.

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1995

1994 1994: The IAF organizes Beyond Boundaries: Intercultural Sculpture Symposium, in Ottawa, bringing together Carol Bretzloff, Lynda Cronin, Audrey Greyeyes, Mattiusi Iyaituk, Daniel Kumarluk, Harry Semigak, John Tappin, Jim Thomson, Paul Toolooktook and Natar Ungalaaq for three weeks of exchange and culminating in a group exhibition.

A crowd gathers to watch a fashion show, showcasing over 100 garments at Qaggiq, 1995 →

1995: The IAF organizes the inaugural Qaggiq, in which 17 Inuit artists participate to showcase Inuit games, music, TV, art and fashion at the Canadian Museum of Civilization (now the Canadian Museum of History). Over 15,000 people attend over two days.

1992–1996: The IAF publishes six issues of The Adventures of Sananguaqatiit, an Inuk superhero conceived during a board meeting

by Mattiusi Iyaituk, who taught Inuit artists about everything from health and safety practices to how to navigate copyright legislation.

Each issue is sent to approximately 2,200 artists in Inuit Nunangat.

←

Natar Ungalaaq (left) shows his work to Lynda Cronin and Daniel Kumarluk, Ottawa, 1994

1994: After participating in Beyond Boundaries, Paul Toolooktook requests a skill-building workshop for his community. In response, the IAF offers a two-week workshop to the Ujaraqtait Society in Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake) on the safe use of power tools, inlay techniques and health and safety practices. Barney Aarvaq, Thomas Akilak, Janet Ekuutaq, Dennis Eqqaat, Elizabeth Paungrat, David Quinangnaq, Simon Tookoome and Paul Toolooktook participate.

LEFT TO RIGHT: Qaunaq Mikkigak, Oviloo Tunnillie, Mayoreak Ashoona, an unidentified man, Pitaloosie Saila, an unidentified woman, Okpik Pitseolak, Napachie Pootoogook at the opening of Isumavut: The Artistic Expression of Nine Cape Dorset Women, at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1994 ↓

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Paul Toolooktook (seated right) and five other artists participate in a carving safety workshop, Qamani’tuaq, 1994

Anniversary

1994: The IAF brings together Mayoreak Ashoona, Ida Karpik, Okpik Pitseolak, Napachie Pootoogook, Towkie Qarpik and Pitaloosie Saila for a printmaking residency, where they learn etching techniques.

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Wayne Puqiqnak holds a carving he completed at the Kitikmeot Carving Workshop, 1999 ↓

2000–2001: The IAF facilitates a twophase workshop for Nunavik artists to visit Kinngait Studios to learn printmaking techniques. Led by Pitseolak Niviaqsi, Qavavau Manumie and Rob Harmer, and supported by William Ritchie and Jimmy Manning, participants Victoria Grey, Maggie Kiatainaq, Samwillie Nutaraluk, Elijah Palliser and Jusi Sivuarapik collaborated with Kenojuak Ashevak, Arnaqu Ashevak, Kananginak Pootoogook, Pitaloosie Saila and Shuvinai Ashoona. The IAF then sends participants printmaking tools to continue their practice.

1997: The IAF organizes the first PanArctic Women’s Workshop. Martina Anoee, Sarah Appaqaq, Susan Avingaq, Josephine Felix, Elisapee Inukpuk, Lena Iqaqrialu, Elisapee Itulu, Madeline Ivalu, Rhoda Karetak, Elsie Klengenberg, Mary Kunnuk, Susie Malgokak, Lucy Meeko, Shirley Moorhouse, Maudie Ohiktook, Akitiq Sanguya and Lucy Sanertanut come together for three weeks of studio and professional development work.

1996: The IAF brings together more than 40 artists from across Inuit Nunangat to demonstrate their artwork, as well as participate in workshops and demonstrations at Qaggiq 1996. Manasie Akpaliapik, Thomassie Alikatutuk, Martina Anoee, Marilyn Baikie, Norm Cohn, Marie-Hélène Cousineau, Kathleen Fleming, Fred Gruben, William Gruben, Leah Idlout, Phillipa Iksiraq, Gordon Ittagiak, Madeline Ivalu, Mattiusi Iyaituk, Natsiq Kango, Silas Kayakjuak, John Max Kudlak, Simeonie Kunnuk, Zacharias Kunuk, Floyd Kuptana, Michael Massie, Shirley Moorhouse, Peter Morgan, Eli Nasogaluak, William Noah, Phanuelie Palluq, Okpik Pitseolak, Leah Pootoogook, Andrew Qappik, Pauloosie Qulitalik, Pitaloosie Saila, Johnny Sivuarapik, Joseph Suqsluk, Ronald Taylor, John Terriak and Simon Tookoome join Darlene Coward Wight, Maureen Flynn-Burhoe and the IAF for the festivities.

2000 –01

↓

1999

1996 –97

Manasie Akpaliapik drum dances at the opening of Qaggiq, 1996

1999: The IAF brings Inuk Charlie, Jorgen Klengenberg, Charlie Okpik, Wayne Puqiqnak, and Leo Uttaq together for the Kitikmeot Carvers Symposium at the Ottawa School of Art. This two-week program of studio work, technical training and professional development culminates in the annual Qaggiq, which celebrates the creation of Nunavut.

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LEFT TO RIGHT: Maudie Ohiktook, Akitiq Sanguya and Okpik Pitseolak laugh together while making sculptures, 1997

LEFT TO RIGHT:

Jimmy Manning, Pitseolak Niviaqsi, Jusi Sivuarapik, Kenojuak Ashevak, Samwillie Nutaraluk, Elijah Palliser, Victoria Grey and Maggie Kiatainaq in Kinngait Studios, 2000 ↓

←

An unidentified participant of the 1997 carving workshop in Kinngait, 1997 1997: The IAF offers a six-week workshop in Kinngait, led by Okpik Pitseolak, for emerging carvers.

Morning sessions are spent with elders and afternoons with youth. The group learns about stone types, tool use, carving techniques, health and safety issues and pricing.

1997: Marion Blake, Kim Brown, Heather Campbell, Karen Ijjangiaq, Jeffrey McRae and Billy Okalik participate in the Cultural Industries Training Program.

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Heather Campbell (centre) speaks with artists as part of her training with the Cultural Industries Training Program, 1997

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Susie Malgokak (centre) at work at the Ottawa School of Art, 2001

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2004

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2002 –03

Nellie Nungak (left) and Alacie Tullaugaq practice throat singing

Henry Kudluk (left), Marybelle Mitchell (second from right) and Mattiusi Iyaituk (far right) speaking with Russian participants at the Connecting Cultures seminar, 2002 ←

2001: The IAF provides funding and logistical support to organize the inaugural Throat Signing Symposium.

Organized by the Avataq Cultural Institute, over 60 individuals from Nunavik and Nunavut participate.

2002: The IAF participates in the threeday Connecting Cultures seminar in Tyumen, Siberia, to assist Indigenous artists from Arctic Russia access more supports for their work.

2004: The IAF invites 50 artists from across Inuit Nunangat for the inaugural Arts Alive event, which offers demonstrations, seminars and educational opportunities. Mary Akavak, Germaine Arnaktauyok, Adamie Ashevak, Kenojuak Ashevak, Tony Atsanik, Noah Echalook, Emily Flowers, Elisapee Inukpuk, Jackussie Ittukalluk, Mattiusi Iyaituk, Lucien Kabvitok, Leesee Karpik, Elsie Klengenberg, Sammy Kudluk, Zacharias Kunuk, Susie Malgokak, Michael Massie, Nakashoo Michael, Bill Nasogaluak, Imona Natsiapik, Chesley Nibgoarsi, Nuna Parr, Taqralik Partridge, Okpik Pitseolak, Leela Qalingo Angutigirk, Palaya Qiatsuq, David Ruben Piqtoukun, Nina Segalowitz, Kathy Settler, Karin Settler, Aq jangajuk Shaa, Joshua Sivuarapik, John Terriak, Alacie Tullaugaq, Oviloo Tunnillie and Natar Ungalaaq participate.

2003: The IAF organizes the High Arctic Workshop at the Ottawa School of Art. Ilkoo Angutikjuak, Tony Atsanik, Igah Hainnu, Jaypiti Inutiq, Josie Pitseolak and Regilee Piungituq participate in studio training and professional development before attending in the IAF’s annual Qaggiq.

2001: The IAF organizes the Western Arctic Workshop, where Floyd Dillon, Mike Harrison, Patrick Harrison, Elsie Klengenberg and Susie Malgokak visit the Ottawa School of Art for technical training provided by Bill Nasogaluak. ↑

Josie Pitseolak, IAQ staff member Henry Kudluk and Jaypiti Inutiq examine a carving at the High Arctic Workshop, 2003

2005: The IAF’s annual Arts Alive brings together an international delegation of Inuit for cultural exchange. Mark Airut, Arnaqu Ashevak, Irene Avaalaaqiaq, Inuk Charlie, Jimmy Iqaluq, Mattiusi Iyaituk, Lucien Kabvitok, Sammy Kudluk, Victoria Mamnguqsualuk, Shirley Moorhouse, Mathew Nuqingaq, Nuna Parr, Taqralik Partridge, Okpik Pitseolak, Annie Pootoogook, Derrick Pottle, Leela Qalingo Angutigirk, Andrew Qappik, John Terriak, Alacie Tullaugaq, Nina Segalowitz and Alacie Sivuarapik participate. The IAF also hosts artists from Russia in a two-week seminar focusing on the business of artmaking.

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Victoria Mamnguqsualuk demonstrates making a wall hanging at Arts Alive, 2005

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LEFT TO RIGHT: Artists and IAF board members John Terriak, Sammy Kudluk, Jackussie Ittukallak, Nuna Parr, Mattiusi Iyaituk and Okpik Pitseolak open Arts Alive, 2004

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2006: The Cultural Industries Certificate Program (CICP) is established, succeeding the Cultural Industries Training Program.

Rather than offering months-long training, the CICP provides ten-day long training programs tailored to specific groups’ interests. The program focuses on providing networking and capacity-building training for emerging arts administrators in the North.

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2007: The IAF produces a series of instructional posters for artists on a variety of health and safety issues featuring Sananguaqatiit, which were translated into multiple dialects of Inuktut and distributed across Inuit Nunangat.

2008: The IAF launches Inuit Art Alive, an online showcase of 63 prominent Inuit artists’ works and biographies to make their art more accessible worldwide.

Then curator at the then–Canadian Museum of Civilization Norman Vorano shows Cultural Industries Certificate Program participants objects from the museum’s collection, 2006

2011 –12

2009

2008

2006 –07

2009: The IAF launches a Nunavik Art Alive, featuring the work and biographies of 56 artists from across Nunavik.

A view of Aisa Amittu’s profile on the Nunavik Art Alive website ↓

2011: The Inuit Art Quarterly celebrates 25 years of publishing with a special issue

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A view of the Inuit Art Alive website, 2008

YOUR HANDS

2012: The IAF announces its intention to close due to difficult financial circumstances. The response from artists, collectors, curators, gallerists and others is immediate: 31 stakeholders from the North and South organize an emergency meeting to revive the organization. This results in the IAF resuming operations later that year.

← WHEN USING POWER TOOLS:

SANANGUAQATIIT SAYS:

BROUGHT TO YOU BY:

Inuit Art Quarterly

Your Hands Are Your Most Important Tool!, one of several instructional health and safety posters made and distributed by the IAF

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2016

2015

2013 –14

2016: The IAF funds a residency opportunity for ceramic artists John Kurok and Pierre Aupilardjuk to work with Shary Boyle at Medalta.

The works produced, and their collaborations, are featured prominently in Esker Foundation’s exhibition Earthlings in early 2017.

2013–14: The newly reconstituted IAF undertakes an extensive stakeholder consultation, touring all regions of Inuit Nunangat and Southern Canada.

These consultations help to form the strategic priorities for the Foundation moving forward.

Pierre Aupilardjuk at work on a ceramic vessel at Medalta, 2016 ↓

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IAF board member Sammy Kudluk (right) participates in stakeholder consultations, Nain, 2014

2015: Heather Igloliorte becomes the first Inuk to edit an issue of the Inuit Art Quarterly. Her special issue, themed around art from Nunatsiavut, becomes the first to sell-out during its time on newsstands.

2017: The IAF announces it has taken control of the sixty-year-old Igloo Tag Trademark from the federal government in Iqaluit. For the first time, the mark will be managed by Inuit. The IAF begins its extensive consultation tour at the Nunavut Arts Festival after the announcement.

2014: The Inuit Art Quarterly resumes publishing with a special issue dedicated to the memory of Kenojuak Ashevak.

2014: In partnership with the Mobilizing Inuit Cultural Heritage Project at York University, the IAF organizes an exhibition of contemporary artwork at the Great Northern Arts Festival in conjunction with the Inuit Circumpolar Council meeting. The IAF also provides professional development workshops to artists in attendance.

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Former IAQ editor Christine Lalonde beside one of the artworks included in the exhibition Nunali at the Great Northern Arts Festival, 2014

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Authentically Inuit

by Leslie Boyd

Indigenous artists throughout the world have developed trademarks to protect and promote the authenticity of their art.¹ Inuit artists in Canada were among the first, and their mark is known as the Igloo Tag. Its story dates back to the post-war development of Inuit art.

The key players in the story were, in addition to the Inuit carvers and craftspeople, the federal government’s Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND; now Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada [INAC]), the Quebec branch of the Canadian Handicrafts Guild (now The Guild), the Hudson’s Bay Company and James and Alma Houston. The Guild had been involved in the support of Inuit craftspeople as early as 1911, but their efforts took a firm hold when Houston went on his now legendary sketching trip to Inukjuak in 1948. The Guild’s inaugural exhibition in the fall of 1949 marked the beginning of the Inuit art phenomenon.

Inuit art’s instantaneous popularity soon attracted counterfeiters.

As early as the mid-1950s, mass-produced replicas of “Inuit carvings” started reaching the Canadian marketplace from overseas. Initially, these were objects made of resin compound that mimicked Inuit themes and style, but over the years manufacturers expanded their product lines and went out of their way to present them as if they were genuinely traditional. Some adopted Inuit sounding names and included “artist” biographies and Inuit legends and stories in accompanying merchandising cards. Others referred to “truly talented artists” who were fascinated with “Canada’s northern culture” and “express[ed] this culture in soapstone.”2 Most stopped just short of claiming that the “artists” were Inuit, but they all blurred the truth with linguistic trickery and marketing mumbo jumbo. Widely dubbed “fakelore”, the practice represents not just an economic challenge to Inuit communities engaged in the production of original art, but blatant appropriation of Inuit cultural traditions and practices that inform their work.

When these imposters first appeared, the federal government was quick to respond. DIAND developed the Canadian Eskimo Art and Design (CEAAD) mark, registering it in 1958 to protect both the consumer and the Inuit carver from mass-produced imitations. The symbol chosen to represent the authenticity of Inuit-made products was a stylized igloo with the words “Eskimo Art”, or later “Eskimo Art Esqimau”, incorporated in the design of the mark. Thereafter the mark became universally known as the Igloo Tag.

DID YOU KNOW? The Igloo Tag Trademark contributes $3.5 million annually to the Inuit arts economy?

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Bryan Winters, Alysa Procida and Elizabeth Logue following the official transfer of the Igloo Tag in Iqaluit, NU, 2017

At the outset, the Igloo Tag program was administered through the IAF’s communications plan is to raise awareness of the trademark the federal government by way of nine additional authorized Inuit in the North and at the community level. The economic impact art distributors, who were formally licensed to use the tag. Five of the tag, however, remains strong. The 2017 study determined that are still active and use the tag as a guarantee of authenticity. They collectors are willing to pay more for a work with the trademark are The Guild, La Fédération des coopératives du Nouveau-Québec than one without, by as much as $117 on average, which generates (FCNQ), Canadian Arctic Producers (CAP), the West Baffin approximately $3.5 million a year in additional revenues through Eskimo Co-operative and the Government of Nunavut and its arms. the five legacy licensees.

Until the early 1980s, DIAND supported the tag and its distributors Another objective of the IAF’s outreach is to determine if and through a public education campaign and monitored its use by how the tag can be expanded to include all artistic disciplines in the the authorized licensees. In 1984, DIAND’s Northern Program was North. Inuit artists now embrace many disciplines in addition to dissolved and subsequent departmental restructuring marked the traditional fine arts and crafts, including the performing arts, literary beginning of the end of the federal government’s active involvement arts and film and media arts. Preliminary conversations with artists with the Igloo Tag. and organizations promoting these disciplines show support for Many studies have been commissioned over the years to resolve a national brand and program to support artists and raise awareness what came to be known as “the Igloo Tag dilemma.”3 DIAND no of their work.

The Igloo Tag is still perceived as a mark of Inuit authenticity longer wanted to commit resources to the administration of the tag and this is very important to Indigenous groups around the world, but they still owned the trademark, and the tag was still in widespread especially as the issues around cultural appropriation are more use. Every study also concluded that the tag had considerable value widely discussed. Inuit communities benefit enormously from the and potential in the global promotion of Inuit art. The dilemma was sale of genuine, original art, and the need for broader education finally resolved in 2014 when the newly named Aboriginal Affairs about contemporary Inuit life and culture is still great. The Igloo Tag and Northern Development Canada (formerly DIAND, now INAC) has a role to play in countering the misinformation surrounding the began the process of transferring the Igloo Tag program to the newly marketing of Inuit art and the Inuit Art Foundation has a well-timed reconstituted Inuit Art Foundation (IAF), Canada’s Inuit-governed, opportunity to enhance its visibility and expand its role. national organization dedicated to supporting the work of Inuit artists.

On March 9, 2017, the IAF took full ownership and control of the trademark. For the first time, the Igloo Tag Trademark is being overseen and managed by Inuit, for Inuit.

The past two years have provided an opportunity to reassess the NOTES significance of the tag within the changing landscape of contemporary Inuit art. Research undertaken by the IAF, as well as by INAC through ¹ Alaska, New Zealand, Australia, Greenland and Norway/Finland have all developed programs and trademarks to identify and authenticate Indigenous art. their 2017 Impact of the Inuit Arts Economy study, has revealed that the tag is widely recognized in the southern marketplace but has fairly ² Melanie Scott, “Faking It: The Appropriation of a Culture,” Inuit Art Quarterly 12, no. 2 (Summer 1997): 18. low recognition among Inuit artists themselves. This is not surprising ³ The Canadian Eskimo Art and Design Trade-Mark (Igloo Tag); Case Study: since the artist has not traditionally been involved in the marketing The West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative, Cape Dorset, Nunavut. Internal review by and distribution of their work. That’s changing, and one of the goals of the Indian and Inuit Art Centre, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 2006–2007.

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Authentically Inuit

Flashback:

Jessie Oonark

by Sarah Milroy

Jessie Oonark

Flashback:

In 2015 a remarkable collection of more than two dozen drawings by the late artist were discovered in the most unlikely of places: New York City. Their long journey, which began in the Sanavik Co-operative studio in Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake), NU, some five decades before, has brought them back to Canada and to our pages. Reproduced here for the first time, these works are shown in celebration of our 30th anniversary.

Jessie Oonark (1906–1985 Qamani’tuaq) — PREVIOUS SPREAD

BELOW

Untitled (Goats Climbing a Rock) c. 1967 Felt-tip pen 27.9 × 45.7 cm

Untitled (Four Women with Ulus) c. 1967 Felt-tip pen 27.9 × 45.7 cm

ALL ARTWORKS COLLECTION CANADIAN ARCTIC PRODUCERS REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION THE JESSIE OONARK ESTATE/ PUBLIC TRUSTEES FOR NUNAVUT PHOTOS ERIN YUNES/ABBOT IMAGING

In the study of art, a seam in time can sometimes unexpectedly open, spilling a packet of the past. All the spark and vitality of a moment long passed has somehow been saved and can now be relived afresh.

Such was the experience of eighty-two-year-old, New York-based writer and educator Richard Lewis, who was quietly performing that most monotonous of domestic chores—cleaning his basement— when he came across a manila envelope containing a blast from his past. Inside were 27 pristine drawings on coloured card stock, the work of the Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake), NU, artist Jessie Oonark, OC, RCA (1906–1985), drawings made with coloured pens when the artist was in her prime, in the late 1960s.

Oonark died in 1985, having received the Order of Canada the year before. Though she only began making her drawings and hangings at the age of 59, she quickly established herself as a trailblazer in the field of Inuit visual art, with her work shown in exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Museum of Man (now the Canadian Museum of History), Av Isaacs’ Innuit Gallery of Eskimo Art in Toronto, ON, and, after her death, in a major 1986 retrospective at the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG). Oonark was also den mother—both literally and figuratively—to a whole generation of artists in her adopted hometown. (Eight of her children would become artists, and her work would lay the foundations for the discipline of artmaking in that remote community.) One of the generation of Inuit who began life on the land—in her case in the remote Back River area, 200 kilometers northwest of Qamani’tuaq— she and her children were relocated by the RCMP to Qamani’tuaq in 1958, barely surviving the caribou starvations.

It was decades after those harrowing years that Lewis encountered Oonark’s work for the first time in the Toronto apartment of Alma Houston, founder of Canadian Arctic Producers. “I couldn’t

believe what I was seeing,” Lewis said to me when we met to talk about Oonark at a diner in New York. “My mouth was literally hanging open. There were just stacks of her works there. Alma said, take some.” Oonark was already gaining a southern following, and Lewis was looking for drawings to illustrate a book that he was working on, I Breathe a New Song: Poems of the Eskimo (1971), which gathered songs from sources as wide-ranging as the Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen to the German-American anthropologist Franz Boas. Edmund Carpenter, a noted anthropologist and communications theorist, wrote the forward.

What Lewis found in that envelope, returned now to the care of Canadian Arctic Producers, was irrefutable evidence of Oonark’s artistic mastery, expressed in its most condensed, expressive form.

Many of Oonark’s drawings were made into prints over the years, both in Qamani’tuaq and at the famous printshop in Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, where her first prints were published in 1961. But those compositions have often been cropped and their colours altered by the printmaker, who has their own vision to express. Sometimes these alterations were made with an eye to the imagined preferences of the white, buying audience down south. The drawings Lewis saw that day were likely made at the encouragement of Boris Kotelewetz, who still lives in Qamani’tuaq, and who supplied Oonark with brightly coloured paper and pens. But they take us back to the core of her vision, having come into being with the minimum of material impediment or interference.

During her lifetime, Oonark was much revered as a textile artist, building on her well-honed skills as a seamstress, and that craft would inform her image making in all media. Sewing garments, she would often create decorative embellishments by cutting away material and creating snugly fitted inserts of contrasting skin—

Oonark with her family, c. 1973 standing from left: Martha Noah, unidentified, William Noah Seated from left: Jessie Oonark, Victoria Mamnguqsualuk, and Samson Kayuryuk, Oonark’s grandchildren unidentified PHOTO JACK BUTLER UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA ARCHIVES

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Flashback: Jessie Oonark

“Even before she started drawing, she was a master of what we in our world would call figure-ground relations. The more mature she became, the more tension there was between the two.”

a precise and exacting craft that she translated with apparent effortlessness to her brightly coloured wall hangings. The artist Jack Butler, now eighty and living in Hamilton, ON, watched Oonark’s art closely over the course of his many years as an art advisor to the Sanavik Co-op (Butler lived in Qamani’tuaq off and on from 1969 to 1976). He, too, can remember his first view of Oonark’s drawings. “They had a striking graphic authority,” he recalls, “like she was absolutely certain of everything she was doing.

Her image making comes, I think, from that very fundamental practice of inlaying—of setting one piece of fabric or skin decisively inside another. So even before she started drawing, she was a master of what we in our world would call figure-ground relations.

The more mature she became, the more tension there was between the two.”

This is clear when you look at the drawings, in which figureground relations are laid out as Oonark spontaneously devised them. An assembly of women with their ulus and elaborately braided hair fill in the picture surface, their somewhat cramped pictorial quarters expressing a feeling of conviviality, intimacy and pleasure in present company. (The selection of bright yellow paper for this work expresses a kindred warmth.) Another drawing shows five men engaged in a drum dance, their bodies arced in exertion inside the tight pictorial space, and one feels the compression of activities performed in the close quarters of the igloo. In Oonark’s drawing of a hunter in a kayak, both kayak and caribou surge to the picture’s right-hand margin, enhancing the drama of movement, with space opening out behind them. In another drawing depicting a hunter harpooning a seal, an isolating backdrop of stark white around the figures heightens our sense of the concentration of the hunter.

All extraneous detail is deleted in her depiction of this high-stakes act of survival. With Oonark, what is left out is as telling as what is put in. Composition always enhances the dynamics of meaning.

Simplicity was Oonark’s strength. “What is remarkable is her ability to organize her images, to be able to see what was essential,” says Marie Bouchard, co-curator with Jean Blodgett of the 1986 Oonark retrospective at the WAG. Bouchard also appreciates Oonark’s use of often dramatic dislocations of scale in the service of emphasis—an approach unfamiliar to European eyes accustomed to three-point perspective. In Oonark’s world, scale speaks not of foreground proximity but of importance. Thus two handmaids serve as full-body pendants to the giant head of a tattooed woman clad in her amauti (woman’s parka). The whole is understood, with Oonark indulging an emphatic pictorial shorthand that is all the more expressive for its economy.

Here, as in so many of her works, there is the initial perception of symmetry, one that on closer scrutiny becomes destabilized by the revelation of difference. Both attendant figures lean in, yet their clothing is different. One carries a child; the other does not.

JACK BUTLER

Jessie Oonark — BELOW LEFT

BELOW RIGHT

Untitled (Catching Fish) c. 1967 Felt-tip pen 27.9 × 45.7 cm

Untitled (Drumming Scene) c. 1967 Felt-tip pen 27.9 × 45.7 cm

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TOP

BOTTOM

Untitled (Catching Caribou on the Water) c. 1967 Felt-tip pen 22.8 × 30.5 cm

Untitled (Caribou on the Move) c. 1967 Felt-tip pen 22.8 × 30.5 cm

Jessie Oonark — ABOVE

Untitled (Mother Caribou and Calf Traversing the Landscape) c. 1967 Felt-tip pen 27.9 × 45.7 cm

TOP

MIDDLE

BOTTOM

Untitled (A Hunter on the Lookout) c. 1967 Felt-tip pen 22.8 × 30.5 cm

Untitled (Braiding Hair) c. 1967 Felt-tip pen 22.8 × 30.5 cm

Untitled (Hunter with Seal) c. 1967 Felt-tip pen 22.8 × 30.5 cm

Jessie Oonark —

TOP

BOTTOM

Untitled (Joyful Man) c. 1967 Felt-tip pen 27.9 × 45.7 cm

Untitled (Hunter with Caribou Herd) c. 1967 Felt-tip pen 27.9 × 45.7 cm

Oonark’s line goes beyond utility, cutting through space, tightening it under her control and demarcating zones of action—often those of the hunter and the hunted.

—

One stands; one crouches. Yet they hold our attention with precisely equivalent force, two vibrant parentheses binding the composition together. Oonark’s drawing of two men wrestling does likewise.

A composition in black and green, the drawing both is and is not symmetrical; the wrestlers’ forms are interlocked in a yin and yang of gesture and colour. It is that tension between symmetry and asymmetry that energizes the whole.

To a degree unprecedented in Inuit art, Oonark verged on abstraction. A hunting blind becomes a stack of blocks worthy of Donald Judd, dividing the picture space. A mother caribou and her calf tiptoe across a series of black, tower-like plinths denoting landscape, the precariousness of the formal relations heightening our sense of their delicate tread. There is a vulnerability expressed here, further heightened by the worried concentric rings of the adult caribou’s gaze as she turns to meet ours. Oonark, who had struggled to shepherd her own children through fearsome adversity in her days of young motherhood, must have known all too well the harried hyper-vigilance of the mother protecting its young.

Most important, though, is Oonark’s command of line, which confers an extraordinary liveliness to her scenes. Some suggest the curving lines of a cloth garment pattern, perhaps the swooping line of the shoulder epaulet on an amauti, a shape the artist would have known by heart through her many years of sewing. (“She had all of us children,” her son, artist William Noah, remembers, “but she would always be making clothes and boots for anyone in the community who needed them.”) But Oonark’s line goes beyond utility, cutting through space, tightening it under her control and demarcating zones of action—often those of the hunter and the hunted. In one such drawing, the line of a hillside seems to snap back on itself, like one of the long whips used by hunters on their dog-teams. That line brings coherence to the picture, pulling it together with a sharp constriction, stunning us with its incarnation of joy.

BELOW

Richard Lewis’ book I Breathe a New Song: Poems of the Eskimo (1971) featuring cover artwork

by Jessie Oonark.

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Jessie Oonark — TOP

MIDDLE

BOTTOM

Untitled (Owl with Eggs) c. 1967 Felt-tip pen 22.8 × 30.5 cm

Untitled (A Man Plays with His Family) c. 1967 Felt-tip pen 22.8 × 30.5 cm

Untitled (Nighttime in the Igloo) c. 1967 Felt-tip pen 22.8 × 30.5 cm

BELOW

Untitled (Woman Skinning Animal) c. 1967 Felt-tip pen 27.9 × 45.7 cm

“She would say, ‘You are being lazy.

You cannot afford this. We are Inuit.’

There was always that determination to do every task to the very best of her abilities, and she told us we must do the same.”

WILLIAM NOAH

LEFT

Portrait of Jessie Oonark, 1968 PHOTO JOHN REEVES COURTESY ART GALLERY OF GUELPH

TOP

Untitled (Two Men Wrestle) c. 1967 Felt-tip pen 22.8 × 30.5 cm BOTTOM

Untitled (Woman Pulls Children) c. 1967 Felt-tip pen 22.8 × 30.5 cm

UN Conference on Human Settlements. Most important to Oonark was to explain to her new admirers, “I have a very big family.”

Barz remembers, too, Oonark’s delight in bringing home a pair of silver boots for one of her granddaughters, after one of her trips down south. Once Oonark had gained her market in the South, gestures of affection might take the form of new washing machines, sewing machines, canoes or ATVs, which would be delivered to Qamani’tuaq via sealift. When she bought things in the co-op, Ford remembers, she would hand her wallet to the person behind the till, and ask them to take the money for her. In her community, she lived a life of total trust.

Her other occasional indulgence, Jack Butler recalls, was movie night at the Qamani’tuaq community hall. In particular, he remembers her excitement about the Beatles film The Yellow Submarine, with its buoyant music, dazzling colour and stylized rendering of an imaginary world. Never mind that the reels were shown in the wrong order.

Most of all, Butler remembers her vibrant aliveness, so obvious in both her art and life. “I can remember once there was a very bad blizzard. You could barely see outside,” Butler told me. “She lived about 20 houses up the road from me, and I was out in the storm trying to get over to the craft shop. It was one of those days when your eyes were freezing open, where the fur of your parka was freezing onto your beard and face. I was kind of stumbling along through the deep snow, when whom should I meet happily bustling along the other way but Jessie Oonark, heading out to do her shopping at the co-op. She was looking at me and laughing.”

That joy may be Oonark’s most remarkable accomplishment, most extraordinary when you consider the austere realities of her life. Everyone who knew her speaks about the tenacity of her Christian faith, adopted in childhood, but it’s still hard to marry the fierce vitality of her art with the knowledge of the dark episodes of her early life: crouching in her skin tent with her starving children, living off boiled caribou leather and awaiting deliverance, or mopping the floors in the Anglican church hall, one of her jobs after resettlement in the community. Oonark was assigned an ID tag— E2 384—as were all the Inuit in the settlement. Her resolve was a sign of her immense personal strength.

“She was always working,” Noah remembers. “She would say, ‘You are being lazy. You cannot afford this. We are Inuit.’ There was always that determination to do every task to the very best of her abilities, and she told us we must do the same.” When asked what his mother did for fun, Noah is at a loss, recalling only her pleasure in cooking for the family while out in the summer camp. There was no notion of time off.

Her only indulgence seems to have been her grandchildren.

Fred Ford, who manned the counter at the tuck shop attached to his Qamani’tuaq gallery, recalls her coming in for candy, always with a flock of children in attendance. (Some were her relations, others were hangers-on.) “They followed her around everywhere,” he remembers. Sandra Barz, a New York-based specialist in Inuit prints, first met Oonark in 1976 at the United Nations in New York, where Oonark was signing a special stamp commemorating the

Anniversary

95

Flashback: Jessie Oonark

For three decades, the IAQ has been introducing readers around the globe to the brightest and most promising artists the Inuit art world has to offer.

For our anniversary issue, we turned it over to some of the most noted and celebrated figures in the field to tell us which emerging to mid-career artists they are watching and why. In turn, we asked these artists to nominate an elder artist who has inspired and motivated their artistic growth. The following portfolio traces relationships across generations and great distances, as well as some much closer to home, and is organized in alphabetical order by our early-career “Artists to Know�.

ARTIST PROFILED:

Patricia Feheley David Ford Ellen Hamilton Marie Horstead Heather Igloliorte Robert Kardosh Zacharias Kunuk Christine Lalonde Paul Machnik Michael Massie Richard Murdoch Christa Ouimet RJ Ramrattan Norman Vorano John Westren

Charlie Adams Saimaiyu Akesuk Latcholassie Akesuk Fanny Algaalaga Avatituq Luke Anguhadluq Tony Anguhalluq Daniel Annanack Julia Manoyok Ekpakohak Leevan Etok Kelly Fraser Sandra Hollett Lizzie Ittinuar Victoria Kakuktinniq Jimmy Kalinek Helen Kalvak

Vinnie Karetak Zacharias Kunuk Jimmy Manning Hannah Massie Barry Pottle Ruth Qaulluaryuk Nuilaalik Arnakallak Saimaut Nicotye Samayualie Keeleemeeoomee Samualie Daniel Shimout Inez Shiwak Jane Shiwak Suurimmaanitchuat Dancers Peter Tapatai Lucy Tulugarjuk

ARTISTS TO KNOW

EMERGING ARTIST PROFILES BY:

Picture this: an enormous tropical spider, a bird wearing striped leotards, a blimp-shaped lemming in bubble gum pink. These are a few of the graphic images from the hand of Saimaiyu Akesuk, a young Kinngait (Cape Dorset) artist who is rapidly gaining a worldwide reputation for her energetic and audacious prints and drawings.

At first glance, Saimaiyu’s works are reminiscent of the simple bold images of elders like Sheojuk Etidlooie and Papiara Tukiki. However the similarities are deceptive.

Unlike her forbearers, Saimaiyu’s work has an urban sensitivity that combines elements of Arctic imagery with Hollywood creations and balloons from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

With loose bounding lines, she draws monumental looking depictions of common birds, animals, transformations and insects and then fills in the shapes with pure, luscious, fruit juice colours and vigorous scribbling and crosshatching. The results are images that are contained yet expansive, intimate yet celebratory and, even on a small scale, larger than life.

Saimaiyu’s prints were first introduced to the public in the 2013 Cape Dorset Annual Print Collection, and, in the years since, she has gone on to exhibit in solo shows in Canada and the US. – John Westren

EMERGING ARTIST

Saimaiyu Akesuk b. 1988 Kinngait, NU

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Saimaiyu Akesuk Untitled 2017 Coloured pencil and ink 58.5 × 76.1 cm COURTESY DORSET FINE ARTS

Inuit Art Quarterly

98

Fall 2017

I was never into art. I found it very boring. I was taking a class with Ningiukulu Teevee, and I would doodle and colour during class. She kept bothering me and asking me to get paper, so one day we went to the co-op shop together and that’s when I started drawing.

When I got home, I stared at my paper for two or three hours and didn’t know what to do. My late grandfather Latcholassie Akesuk’s carvings came to my mind.

He used to make his birds, so that’s what I drew. I draw them from my mind; I don’t need to look at photos or books. I used to find them kind of funny because I didn’t understand the concept of art as a kid. I always think about him now, when I am doing my art. It seems like every time I draw there is a little bit of him there.

I think a lot about my art—who inspired me and who was an artist when I was a kid. My step-grandfather is Qavavau Manumie, and I used to watch him drawing and colouring when I was younger, so I think he has inspired me in some way too. – Saimaiyu Akesuk

ELDER ARTIST

Latcholassie Akesuk 1919–2000 Kinngait, NU

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Latcholassie Akesuk Owl c. 1967 Stone 15.2 × 22.9 × 7.6 cm COURTESY WADDINGTON’S AUCTIONEERS & APPRAISERS

Anniversary

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30 Artists to Know

Fanny Algaalaga Avatituq Untitled c. 2015 Wool and embroidery thread on wool duffle 71.1 × 91.4 cm COURTESY CRAFT ONTARIO

Fanny Algaalaga Avatituq is an amazing textile artist.

She works at the Jessie Oonark Centre almost every afternoon and has been making wall hangings for many years but hasn’t been given much exposure. Most of her works are sold locally and rarely circulate in southern markets.

This said, she is a very skilled artist. Fanny, much like her mother-in-law, Ruth Qaulluaryuk Nuilaalik, creates works that primarily feature flowers or leaves, resulting in dense, all-over patterns. And although they make similar work, Fanny’s pieces are still highly original.

A perfectionist, Fanny will have a wall hanging almost finished but run out of green thread and then tear out all of the stitches to redo them in blue or some other colour, so that everything is harmonious. All are perfectly square, which is very difficult when you make works with lots of tight stitching. Large wall hangings can take Fanny a month or two to make, so we do not get to see as many of her works as we’d like. But when they do come through, they are always exceptional. – David Ford

EMERGING ARTIST

Fanny Algaalaga Avatituq b. 1950 Qamani’tuaq, NU

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Inuit Art Quarterly

100

Fall 2017

I learned to make wall hangings around 1968 or ’69. There was an old training centre, and I started seeing wall hangings for the first time. My mother-in-law, Ruth Qaulluaryuk Nuilaalik, taught me how to make them.

Ruth still sews; she mostly makes wall hangings with patterns of flowers, leaves and animals. All-over patterns are her specialty, and she likes to sew flowers the most.

A long time ago, she wanted to embroider flowers, but she didn’t know how. Once I taught her how, she started using the flowers all the time. Our wall hangings are very different from the other artists in Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake). Sometimes I will make a polar bear, or a bird, or ulus and tools or Inuit games, but usually I make works with all over patterns like Ruth.

She’s getting old, so she’s a bit slower than she used to be. I help her once in awhile when she is having a hard time drawing a pattern or cutting felt. She also tends to use brighter coloured threads now because she has a hard time seeing dark colours. So sometimes I help her pick the colours she wants as well. – Fanny Algaalaga Avatituq

ELDER ARTIST

Ruth Qaulluaryuk Nuilaalik b. 1932 Qamani’tuaq, NU

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Ruth Qaulluaryuk Nuilaalik Summer on the Tundra c. 2010 Melton cloth and thread 95.3 × 72.4 cm COURTESY EXPANDING INUIT

Anniversary

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30 Artists to Know

At 47, Tony Anguhalluq is part of a generation of Inuit drawers and printmakers who are extending and reinventing northern graphic traditions. The adopted son of Luke Anguhadluq and Marion Tuu’luq, Tony’s images differ markedly from those artists of an earlier generation who isolated individual figures against a blank background, rather than representing the land directly in their work.

Tony fills the visual field making the land and landscape his direct and principal subject. In his exuberant and enigmatic images, Tony visualizes the treeless, hilled terrain and flowing waterways, in and around his Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake) hometown, as a series of overlapping abstract contoured blocks of solid colour.

Eschewing uniform perspective and shading, Tony economically uses striking colour contrasts and stylized lines as an alternative way to index depth or recession.

While the contoured northern landscape is the chief focus of his drawings, many of these works also include images—portraits, really—of northern animals and of people engaged in seasonal activities, such as hunting, fishing and camping. Tony documents the traditions and historical ways of his people, even as he suggests a rhythm in human activity consonant with the rhythms of the land that are so powerfully his subject.

– Robert Kardosh

EMERGING ARTIST

Tony Anguhalluq b. 1970 Qamani’tuaq, NU

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Tony Anguhalluq Colourful Mountain Nearby End of the Lake, at Baker Lake 2010 Coloured pencil, oil stick and graphite 63.5 × 90.1 cm COURTESY MARION SCOTT GALLERY

Inuit Art Quarterly

102

Fall 2017

I am mainly inspired by my father, Luke Anguhadluq.

His work is really nice, and I like how he showed his ideas and his history on paper. I remember watching him draw when I was maybe 9 or 10. I was too young to draw then. I first started drawing in 2006. I came down to Vancouver to see Bob [Robert] Kardosh at Marion Scott Gallery, and he showed me my dad’s drawings then.

That was interesting to see.

I’m trying to do something a bit different, but I’m always looking to see if there’s anything similar between my dad’s landscapes and hunting scenes and what I’m doing. I think if my father could see my art today, he would probably like it. He’d say, “That’s a nice drawing— that’s what Inuit used to do.” It’s still about land and camping. – Tony Anguhalluq

ELDER ARTIST

Luke Anguhadluq 1895–1982 Qamani’tuaq, NU

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Luke Anguhadluq Fishing Weir c. 1970–71 Coloured pencil 49.5 × 63.5 cm COURTESY WALKER’S FINE ART & ESTATE AUCTIONS

Anniversary

103

30 Artists to Know

Born in Ulukhaktok (Holman Island), a community known for its graphic art and needlework, Julia Manoyok Ekpakohak grew up enthralled by her grandmother Helen Kalvak’s stories, translating them to paper through drawing. Kalvak taught her granddaughter that drawing can be both a means of expression as well as a means of support for her and her family.

Julia began printmaking in 1999, first with stenciling, a tradition which has strong roots in the community, then later with etching, a move which allowed Julia more control over her work and gave her a finished product that was closer to her drawings.

Kalvak was the original interpreter of stories through art in Ulukhaktok, and Julia’s artwork shares the same honest and direct depictions of life. Where they differ, however, is their subject matter. Where Kalvak, a trained shaman and community leader, was exposed to otherworldly themes, the experiences that Julia translates to paper are more domestic, involving children and the similarities and dissimilarities between northern and southern life. Julia’s works possess a quality of charm, highlighting the whimsy in everyday life. – Christa Ouimet

EMERGING ARTIST

Julia Manoyok Ekpakohak b. 1968 Ulukhaktok, NT

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Julia Manoyok Ekpakohak Big Brother Pulling Sister on Bicycle 1999 Etching 28.5 × 37.9 cm COURTESY HOLMAN ESKIMO CO-OPERATIVE LTD./CANADIAN ARCTIC PRODUCERS

Inuit Art Quarterly

104

Fall 2017

I started making art when I was very young, maybe two years old. I learned from my grandmother Helen Kalvak.

She made drawings, prints and wall hangings from sealskin. She used to tell me stories and then ask me to draw them. I would put them down on paper: a scene of a hunt, or travellers or animals and birds on the land or in the ocean. We would make drawings together.

My mother, Elsie Nilgak, and my grandmother told me that making artwork was going to help me provide for my family. That is very true for me today. I make carvings, crafts and prints, mainly stencils and etchings.

Everything that I have done with my artwork is mainly what my grandmother and mother taught me. To this day, I still use the same patterns and techniques that I learned from them. I use materials I find out on the land to dye my own textiles because it is very costly to import dyes and other finished materials. Being raised in and living in Ulukhaktok my entire life, I try to use the traditional knowledge that I was taught. – Julia Manoyok Ekpakohak

ELDER ARTIST

Helen Kalvak CM, RCA 1901–1984 Ulukhaktok, NT

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Helen Kalvak Dance 1975 Stonecut 45.7 × 61 cm COURTESY FEHELEY FINE ARTS

Anniversary

105

30 Artists to Know

Leevan Etok is certainly a “30 Artists to Know”. Although he has made a few wonderful sculptures in stone, he works mostly in caribou antler, as good carving stone is hard to find around Kangiqsualujjuaq. Leevan had the good fortune to have Daniel Annanack as a mentor, and, while his earlier works resemble those of Daniel, Leevan is quickly developing his own, unique style, characterized by clean, very detailed bas-relief work.

Some of his best carvings are of dog teams, which demonstrate that he really knows and understands that subject. Upon close observation you can see that he has very precisely rendered each of the individual planks of the qamutiik (sled). He has also done impressive hunting and family scenes, utilizing the natural shapes of the antler. Often Leevan will leave some of the original patina of the antler, creating a beautiful contrast between the natural and polished surfaces. His work incorporates traditional subject matter and themes, which he is able to expertly render with modern tools and techniques. In 2015, a carving by Leevan won second place in the Carving Contest organized by La Fédération des coopératives de Nouveau-Québec. My only problem with Leevan is that we would like to see more of his work!

– Richard Murdoch

EMERGING ARTIST

Leevan Etok

b. 1988 Kangiqsualujjuaq, QC

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Leevan Etok Man and Dog Team 2015 Antler 23.5 × 45 × 9.5 cm COURTESY LA FÉDÉRATION DES COOPÉRATIVES DU NOUVEAU-QUÉBEC

Inuit Art Quarterly

106

Fall 2017

I started carving when I was 14 or 15 years old. Daniel Annanack was a professional artist who taught carving when I was in the Individual Paths for Learning program.

I used to watch him, and I tried my best to make carvings.

I started with caribou antler and made carvings of belugas and walruses. Daniel gave me three huskies, so I could have a dog team. I had to take care of them, so I made and sold my first carvings to buy their food.

Daniel told me about carving courses in other communities; I applied and was accepted to one in Akulivik, Nunavik, QC. The first day of the carving course, I got a Dremel and other tools I needed to become a carver. Daniel had many students, and I would help him teach carving. Later, I became a culture teacher at the school. I teach stone carving to students and they love it. I’d like to make a shack, so that I can teach people how to polish steatite. My wish is to help someone like Daniel helped me. I want to help my community, so I will try my best. – Leevan Etok

ELDER ARTIST

Daniel Annanack b. 1967 Kangiqsualujjuaq, QC

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Daniel Annanack Shaman of the North 2010 Antler, bone and baleen 40.6 × 55.8 × 20 cm COURTESY TIVI GALLERIES

Anniversary

107

30 Artists to Know

At age 24, Kelly Fraser is the right age to be considered an emerging artist, yet she has been perfecting her music, actively recording and performing for over a decade.

Born in Tikirarjuaq (Whale Cove), NU, she grew up in Sanikiluaq, where, inspired by a music video, she became determined to play the guitar at age 11 and has ever since. She formed her first band at age 15. Kelly’s music has reached far and wide, in the North and beyond, through her adept use of social media such as SoundCloud and YouTube.

First capturing attention for her savvy interpretations of songs such as Rihanna’s “Diamonds” into Inuktut, Kelly’s first album, Isuma (Think), was released in 2014, followed by Sedna/Nuliajuk early in 2017. The artist records and performs in both English and Inuktut and will be leading workshops across Nunavut to encourage others to explore songwriting in regional Inuktut dialects.

Immensely talented and hard working, Fraser performs regularly across the country with her band the Easy Four and will travel to participate in the Qooqqut Festival in Nuuk, Greenland, in late 2017. She is already a force to be reckoned with at this early stage of what promises to be a spectacular career. – Christine Lalonde

EMERGING ARTIST

Kelly Fraser

b. 1993 Sanikiluaq, NU / Ottawa, ON

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Kelly Fraser performing live in Montreal for Aboriginal Day, 2017 PHOTO NIPIVUT

Inuit Art Quarterly

108

Fall 2017

I have been listening to Charlie Adams’ music since birth; my father was always playing his music. I remember learning to sing his song “Quviasupunga” (I’m Happy) when I was just three years old. It was my father’s favourite song, and, after he passed away, I translated it from Inuktut into English, so my family could understand it. I included a recording of “Quviasupunga” in both languages on my first album Isuma (2014).

When I was a child, I saw Charlie perform. I was part of a dance group that travelled to Inukjuak to perform at a festival in 2001. I watched him perform, and he was amazing! I even got to meet him afterwards, and I still have a picture of him and me. As I grew up, I was deeply immersed in his music and was moved by the sincere and humble stories he told in his songs. He was a wonderful storyteller, and I have so much respect for him. Although he died in poverty in Montreal, I see him as a man with many riches. He wasn’t able to get the help that he needed, but he helped me and many other people. It broke my heart when I found out that he had passed away, because he inspired me to be the Inuit singer that I am today.

– Kelly Fraser

ELDER ARTIST

Charlie Adams 1953–2008 Puvirnituq, QC

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Charlie Adams performing live at the 1995 Qaggiq at the Canadian Museum of Civilization (now the Canadian Museum of History) PHOTO INUIT ART FOUNDATION

Anniversary

109

30 Artists to Know

Sandra Hollett is a determined, outgoing and very energetic recent graduate from the Fine Arts program at Memorial University’s Grenfell Campus in Corner Brook, and, coincidentally, the daughter of my first cousin. But this isn’t why I chose her. My belief is that if a person, no matter their age, is willing to enroll in an art program and further their education, then that alone is a testament to the future of Inuit art and something to be noted and celebrated.

Sandra is the kind of artist who is very willing to try new and different techniques. She has sewn, thrown, painted and printed pieces of art that all hold Inuit ways and traditions in them. To me, her work is a prime example of something that I have been talking about in my own career since I started: even though some artworks may not look Inuit, that is beside the point. The fact is if an artwork is made by an Inuk, it is Inuit art.

Sandra is always thinking of ways she can incorporate new ideas into her work while also injecting them with old traditions. The Inuit art world needs young people like Sandra to keep stories, traditions and ways alive.

They may not look the same or have the same purpose, but that is what art is about—incorporating new ideas and ways. Because of young people like Sandra, we can be sure that that will happen. – Michael Massie

EMERGING ARTIST

Sandra Hollett b. 1994 Corner Brook, NL

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Sandra Hollett Pots 2014 Glazed ceramics various dimensions PHOTO CAMILLE USHER

Inuit Art Quarterly

110

Fall 2017

Choosing one person who has inspired my work is really hard. I want to say that my whole community inspires me. One important influence would be Michael Massie, who is a relative, but also, I would say his mom, Hannah Massie.

Aunt Hannah used to make all kinds of things and would show me how to make them too. She could make pretty much anything. I was told that she even liked to paint, which I never knew. Although she isn’t making crafts anymore, what I remember most were these little pincushions. When I was young, she showed me how to make them from a plate! You draw a circle and then gather the fabric before stuffing it and making the head; that’s how she made her pincushions. I made one a long time ago, but it was super loose stitching; I wasn’t very good at sewing then. I was recently asked to make pincushions for three women in our family “Aunt Hannah-style”. I was much more successful this time.

I loved going over to see Aunt Hannah because she would bring her projects out to show me and would also listen to me as I showed her what I was doing. – Sandra Hollett

ELDER ARTIST

Hannah Massie b. 1936 Mulligan, NL

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Hannah Massie Untitled c. 2000 Embroidery thread on wool duffle 34.3 × 43.2 cm PHOTO MICHAEL MASSIE

Anniversary

111

30 Artists to Know

Victoria Kakuktinniq Parka with Amauti-style Hem 2016 Ring seal with silver fox fur Dimensions variable COURTESY VICTORIA’S ARCTIC FASHIONS

Victoria Kakuktinniq is an artist and fashion designer, born and raised in Kangiqliniq (Rankin Inlet), NU. She is the proprietor of the Iqaluit-based design label Victoria’s Arctic Fashions (VAF), and was the winner of the 2015 Nunavut Trade Show’s Business of the Year Award. VAF produces high-end contemporary fashions for women and men, using sealskin (sometimes dyed in eye-dazzling colours) and leather, along with modern rip-resistant fabrics engineered for cold weather. Her parka and blazer designs are contemporary, sophisticated and very functional. Embellished with fine detail and fur trim, Victoria’s body-shaping designs draw upon long-standing Inuit clothing patterns that date back many centuries.

Victoria learned to sew from women in her community before honing her talents at MC College in Winnipeg, MB, where she took Fashion Design and Apparel Production.

Victoria is an “Artist to Know”, not only for her outstanding designs, but also because she is part of a young generation of artist-entrepreneurs popping-up across the North. These are artists who are creating their own businesses, working outside the normal channels of Inuit art distribution, liaising directly with customers and retailers, and using social media and the web to build a market for their creative work in Canada and the world.

– Norman Vorano

EMERGING ARTIST

Victoria Kakuktinniq b. 1989 Iqaluit, NU

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Inuit Art Quarterly

112

Fall 2017

Lizzie Ittinuar Beaded Amauti c. 1970s Cotton, wool, beads, coins and lead 163.8 × 109.9 × 10.2 cm COURTESY PEARY-MACMILLAN ARCTIC MUSEUM & ARCTIC STUDIES CENTER, BOWDOIN COLLEGE

My grandma is Lizzie Ittinuar. She is a well-known maker of amautiit (women’s parkas) and a beader. Her hard work and dedication has really inspired me. Every time I visit her, she is working. Beading takes lots of time and patience. Over the years, she has made quite a few traditional beaded amautiit which can take years to finish.

When I was in high school, I had no idea how to sew.

I took a traditional sewing program taught by five elders in Iqaluit. I make more modern parkas with sealskin and I love using the amauti-style hem; it is so feminine and traditional. Everybody loves it! I also put a lot of embroidery on my coats, which is inspired by my grandmother.

I looked at her beadwork and I wondered what I could do with my coats. I don’t know how to bead, so I use embroidery with floral designs. I would love to learn beading if I can ever find the time. My mother, Goretti Kakuktinniq, is also an important influence. For as long as I can remember, my mother made our clothing, mitts and parkas. She also uses a lot of embroidery and sealskin, and I love having those traditional elements incorporated into my designs. – Victoria Kakuktinniq

ELDER ARTIST

Lizzie Ittinuar b. 1929 Kangiqliniq, NU

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Anniversary

113

30 Artists to Know

Inspired by the presence of the Suurimmaanitchuat Dancers from Utqiaġvik (Barrow), Alaska, for the 2009 Traditional Circumpolar Northern Games in Inuvik, Jimmy Kalinek started to look toward drum dancing.

Born and raised in Inuvik, Jimmy approached the Inuvik Drummers and Dancers, whom he says have always been a part of his culture and his life here in the Arctic.

Jimmy embarked on this new endeavour with the utmost commitment by practising every day, recording and reviewing videos of himself drum dancing. This dedication has lead to him becoming a keystone member of the Inuvik Drummers and Dancers as well as to having the experience of performing at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, BC. His career as the proprietor of Only Way Outfitting intertwines with his role as a drum dancer: both skills recognize and prioritize a traditional way of life. Both drum dancing and being on the land draw from a rich Inuvialuit family history; a legacy, which in turn Jimmy passes onto his son. – Marie Horstead

EMERGING ARTIST

Jimmy Kalinek b. 1980 Inuvik, NT

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Jimmy Kalinek performs with the Inuvik Drummers and Dancers, 2014 COURTESY TUSAAYAKSAT MAGAZINE

Inuit Art Quarterly

114

Fall 2017

Drum dancing has always been a part of my culture; I grew up watching it and listening to it. I had a feel for it even before I started to practice. One year, when we had the Northern Games in Inuvik, a contingent came from Utqiaġvik, to participate. I watched the Suurimmaanitchuat Dancers perform from the side of the stage, and I still remember watching one young fellow; he must have been about 10 years old. I couldn’t stop watching the way that he was moving and keeping up with the beat. You could tell his love for the dance was really strong and the passion he had was very moving.

Watching that young boy moved me and inspired me to dance like him.

I attended the first practice of the Inuvik Drummers and Dancers after the Northern Games ended that year and have been dancing ever since. There are a few people who continue to influence my dancing, especially my uncle Roy Ipana, who was really important to me and to this town. He had a true passion for his culture—I seem to follow that. Drum dancing makes me feel like I have been accomplishing something for my culture. I’m still learning, but I’ll never stop learning. – Jimmy Kalinek

ELDER ARTIST

Suurimmaanitchuat Dancers founded in 1990 Utqiaġvik, AK

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Members of the Barrow Dance Group Sheldon Adams III, Kennedy Elavgak and Vernon Charles Elavgak perform at Kivgiq, in Utqiaġvik, 2015 PHOTO BILL HESS

Anniversary

115

30 Artists to Know

I first met Vinnie Karetak, one of the stars of Qanurli?, a popular Inuktut comedy show, a few years ago. I haven’t stopped laughing since. Vinnie is one of the independent owners of the production company, Qanukiaq, as well as a writer and actor on one of the North’s most popular shows, now entering its seventh season on APTN. Everywhere he goes, from Alaska to Greenland, children point him out.

In the years since, we have served together on the Qaggiavuut! Board of Directors where I learned what a calm and insightful leader he is. I have been able to witness his tireless commitment to Inuit language and culture and his championship of Inuit performing artists firsthand. He has an amazing ability to bring out the best in those he works with.

This spring, Vinnie took on a new challenge: codirecting, writing and acting in a new theatre work Kiviuq Returns. He led an all-Inuit cast in the one-hour performance based on Inuit legend that toured Nunavut communities and southern Canada this year. In his spare time, Vinnie is a dedicated dad of two boys, a popular emcee at Nunavut events and an actor in films, including The Grizzlies (2017) and Two Lovers and a Bear (2016).

– Ellen Hamilton

EMERGING ARTIST

Vinnie Karetak b. 1974 Iqaluit, NU

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Vinnie Karetak in a scene from Qallunaat!

Why White People are Funny (2006) COURTESY NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA

Inuit Art Quarterly

116

Fall 2017

I’ve always been interested in being on the stage, ever since my school days; especially when I started seeing Inuit on television, like Super Shamou (Peter Tapatai). He was the Inuk superhero; the show only had three episodes out of the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation (IBC) in the late 1980s. Super Shamou allowed people to think that whatever they see on television, we Inuit could also do the same. The people at IBC have been really great to work with, too, and have been a starting point for getting onscreen art off the ground. Peter is one of our heroes at Qanurli?, as he is someone we can look up to and we appreciate all the work he has done. His work allows us to think it’s okay for us to do what we want to do, in a way that pleases us. We spoke to him once, and he said, “Don’t let anyone think that what you’re doing is competition for other people in the performing arts. It just means you are creating more content for Inuit in Inuktut and that should not be looked upon negatively in any way.” – Vinnie Karetak

ELDER ARTIST

Peter Tapatai b. 1953 Qamani’tuaq, NU

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Peter Tapatai in a still from the television program Super Shamou (1987) COURTESY INUIT BROADCASTING CORPORATION

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30 Artists to Know

It is very exciting to work with an artist who continually strives to take his work to a new level. Barry Pottle is just such an artist. Originally from Rigolet, Nunatsiavut, NL, and now living in Ottawa, Barry has worked for years with the Indigenous arts community in the South. Always interested in photography, he has spent many years in his adopted city capturing images that reflect the culture, activities, concerns and life of the largest urban population of Inuit outside the North. Barry, who believes that the concept of Urban Inuit is for the most part unexplored, captures the uniqueness of this community through the camera lens.

Barry has now moved beyond photojournalism to explore conceptual photography in his search to reflect contemporary Inuit issues and reality. This is evident in his Awareness Series (2009–16), currently on exhibit at the Art Gallery of Hamilton. This photographic suite consists of 19 haunting images recounting the RCMP’s contact with Inuit. The images magnify the Eskimo Identification Tag, developed for census purposes by the Canadian government beginning in the 1940s. Through this work, Barry sheds light on the living history of colonization, bridging the gap between the disc number (tag) and the people.

With this new, tighter focus on singular aspects of the urban Inuit community, I greatly look forward to the next body of work in which the richness and beauty of Barry’s images will reflect his profound and sensitive insight. – Patricia Feheley

EMERGING ARTIST

Barry Pottle b. 1961 Ottawa, ON

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Barry Pottle Still Life (Inuit) 2009 Digital photograph COURTESY THE ARTIST

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Fall 2017

When I first saw the photographic work of Jimmy Manning, I found it awe inspiring and exciting, particularly his early images depicting life on the land and everyday life in and around Kinngait (Cape Dorset).

There is a consistency to his work and an attention to detail that shines through, whether it’s a portrait of an artist at work in the studio or an image of caribou antlers strung across the top of the boat. To some these are scenes of everyday life, but to me, as an artist, they represent the creativity and challenge of documenting life—Inuit life—in a thoughtful way. As a photographer, Jimmy shed light on his community in a manner that I hadn’t seen before and one that has pushed me to try to capture my own Urban Inuit experience. His creative influence and experimentation has allowed me to try different approaches, use different perspectives and explore different themes.

His work as both an artist and an administrator with the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative has been an inspiration for me, and watching him build his career as one of the first professional Inuk photographers has taught me there are no real limits. His sense of professionalism and his calm mannerisms are something I strive to emulate. Following in his artistic footsteps gives me passion, new ideas and the sense that I can do it too. – Barry Pottle

ELDER ARTIST

Jimmy Manning b. 1951 Kinngait, NU

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Jimmy Manning What Will He Think of Next? c. 1980 Slide photograph COURTESY THE ARTIST

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30 Artists to Know

I have nominated Nicotye Samayualie as an “Artist to Know” for several reasons. She has a thoughtful and diligent focus that she applies to her daily routine of creating art, imbuing her work with a sensitivity and an order that is all her own. To my mind, Nicotye has a special ability as an artist to occupy a space outside of the busy pace of daily life, allowing her to look in on and reflect back a way of life and the passage of time.

The artist often revisits subjects, including a personal favourite of mine: overviews of shorelines. She is meticulous in drawing each pebble and crevice, positioning them as though it were a chess match. And while her landscapes have a serenity to their composition, there is always an urgency in her line. I am regularly struck with how Nicotye’s imagery of the natural environment reminds me of Japanese prints. There is a precision and calmness that comes through, which borders on the abstract.

It is my hope that Nicotye will have the opportunity to work internationally and that she will delight in a career as an artist. In a recent conversation with her, she told me her long-term goal is to work with the youth in the community, to mentor them in the act of creativity.

Already, she is thinking as an elder. – Paul Machnik

EMERGING ARTIST

Nicotye Samayualie b. 1983 Kinngait, NU

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Nicotye Samayualie Untitled 2015 Graphite, coloured pencil and ink 81.2 × 126 cm COURTESY DORSET FINE ARTS

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Fall 2017

I used to think when my late grandparents were carving that I would like to become like them and maybe become an artist. My late father used to say that we should start carving or drawing. Have you ever heard of the “Queen of Art” Kenojuak Ashevak? My dream was to be known as a “princess of art”. When Tim Pitsiulak, Bill Ritchie and I were at the Great Northern Arts Festival in 2014, there were many artists, musicians and storytellers who encouraged me not to focus so much on time or to think too much about the act of drawing, [but] just to be in the moment.

Lately, I,ve been thinking of my late father’s late mother, she used to be an artist [and] she drew many birds. I’ve been trying to draw owls in a different way.

Her name was Keeleemeeoomee. She was my grandmother, but she passed away when I was one month old.

Whenever I draw, something invisible touches my hair, so I think my ancestors might be supporting me while I’m making art. I think somebody’s proud of me. I think of our late ancestors as our guardian angels.

– Nicotye Samayualie

ELDER ARTIST

Keeleemeeoomee Samualie 1919–1983 Kinngait, NU

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Keeleemeeoomee Samualie Untitled 1982 Graphite and felt-tip marker 50 × 66 cm COURTESY DORSET FINE ARTS

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30 Artists to Know

Daniel Shimout is a professional, full-time carver who is very passionate about his art. I have known him for over 25 years now and I have watched him grow and develop his skills. I have pushed him, because I know what he is capable of.

Long ago, he mastered carvings of boats and small ivory pieces, but lately his work has taken on more spiritual themes of Sednas and shamans. Daniel’s work is not about size, but rather is amazing for its fine details and his meticulous execution. Many of his figures have delicately rendered teeth and fingernails, and wear incredibly detailed clothing with buttons and belts even when they stand only a few centimetres tall.

I like to see artists grow and step outside of their comfort zone by trying different things. Daniel has proved to be incredibly versatile, incorporating stone, ivory, baleen, antler and bone in his carvings. Many artists have incredible potential, but sometimes just need a push. He is one of the artists that I have worked to mentor, but he has truly done it on his own. He has it in him. – RJ Ramrattan

EMERGING ARTIST

Daniel Shimout b. 1972 Salliq, NU

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Daniel Shimout Merman 2017 Caribou antler, baleen, steatite, sealskin and caribou hooves 20.3 × 22.9 × 7.6 cm (including base) COURTESY WINNIPEG ART GALLERY SHOP

Inuit Art Quarterly

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Fall 2017

Making carvings is in my family. My grandfather Joseph Saimut was a carver, but he died before I was born. My father, Arnakallak Saimut, used to carve and my brotherin-law, Leo Napayok, and my cousin, Leo Angotingoer, are also good artists.

My father carved with files and hand tools, not the Dremels and electric tools that I use. Sometimes I use hand tools and think of my father. I watched him carve as a child, but it didn’t catch on until I was a teenager, maybe 16 years old or so. I had been trying to find my father’s work since he passed away in 1996. It wasn’t until I came to Winnipeg, MB, in June 2017 that I finally saw one of his carvings in the vault at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. They have works by my grandpa, my aunt, my uncle and my father. My grandfather made mermaids; I used to be shy about making mermaids, but I am going to make more now after finally seeing my grandpa’s work. I didn’t expect to see my father’s work, and I got a little emotional. It’s in our blood.

– Daniel Shimout

ELDER ARTIST

Arnakallak Saimut 1940–1996 Salliq, NU

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Arnakallak Saimut Caribou Head c. 1968 Antler and stone 5.8 × 8.40 × 3.5 cm COURTESY MUSEO NACIONAL DE ANTROPOLOGÍA, SPAIN PHOTO MIGUEL ÀNGEL OTERO

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30 Artists to Know

Inez Shiwak My Great Grandparent’s Cabin 2015 Sealskin and wood 152.4 × 91.4 cm PHOTO AIMEE CHALK

Depending on which circles you run in, you may know Inez Shiwak as a video artist and producer, a seamstress, a researcher, or a cultural leader and activist. Inez excels at all of these roles in her community of Rigolet, Nunatsiavut, where she practices sewing, beadwork and other art forms and coordinates the “My Word”: Storytelling and Digital Media Lab, among her many other talents and responsibilities. As an Arctic researcher, she seeks to better understand the impacts of changing climate, health and language through scientific research and participatory digital media. She was recently honoured for this work by Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami when she was presented with the Inuit Recognition Award during the 2016 ArcticNet [Annual Scientific Meeting]. As an artist, she has also recently been recognized by the Nunatsiavut Government with the acquisition of two major sealskin multimedia works for their permanent collection.

Inez learned to sew, make baskets and continue other Inuit practices from her mother, Jane Shiwak, who passed on the skills and knowledge from her own mother and grandmother. Today, Shiwak uses sealskin to produce everything from complex, large-scale wall hangings to petite works of wearable art. In the nationally touring exhibition SakKijâjuk: Art and Craft from Nunatsiavut, Shiwak has two pieces that represent the breadth of her practice, including the single-channel video work Where Have the Voices Gone? (2016) and a pair of beaded moosehide and beaver fur kamek (boots) she made with her mother. – Heather Igloliorte

EMERGING ARTIST

Inez Shiwak b. 1977 Rigolet, NL

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Fall 2017

My work is inspired by my mother, Jane Shiwak, who was born in West Bay and has been living in Rigolet for years, running the craft shop. She makes Inuit dolls, and, as far as I know, she’s the only one in Nunatsiavut still making them. In our family, making crafts has always been there. My mom and I have always done things together.

She starts the projects and then we—my sister and I —contribute to them. We will do the beadwork around [the dolls] or some of those little tedious things that she doesn’t want to do or have time to do. A lot of [learning] has been through talking to her and figuring out which way is best. She would give me ideas of what I could do or how she wanted it done and then she would start it off for me, and I would finish sewing it. It’s generally that she shows me how to do something once. I just learned that way and that’s what we do. – Inez Shiwak

ELDER ARTIST

Jane Shiwak b. 1952 West Bay, NL

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Jane Shiwak Inuit Couple 2015 Sealskin, felt, yarn, fabric, wood, rabbit fur and beads 34.3 × 30.5 × 10.2 cm COURTESY THE ROOMS

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30 Artists to Know

I met Lucy Tulugarjuk a while ago. She played the bad wife in Atanarjuat (2001), so she and I worked together on this film. She was also my first assistant on my film The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, in fall 2006. Lucy will be directing her first film this summer; she was asked by Marie-Hélèn Cousineau to be the director. This will be a children’s feature film about two young girls who meet and become friends. It is about having an opportunity to see and experience Inuit culture through these two girls.

There are quite a few Inuit artists that I really like out there—I like all of them—but Lucy is really talented, and I would like to nominate her. – Zacharias Kunuk

EMERGING ARTIST

Lucy Tulugarjuk b. 1975 Iglulik, NU

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Lucy Tulugarjuk in a still from Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001) © IGLOOLIK ISUMA PRODUCTIONS INC.

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Fall 2017

I have a lot of people who have inspired my work, but I would say that Zacharias Kunuk has really been the central one. I was fifteen and in junior high school when Zach, Paul Apak Angilirq, Paulossie Qulitalik and Norman Cohn started Igloolik Isuma Productions Inc. Before that he worked for the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation (IBC) with Apak who did a short film on Inuit teenagers that was called Friday with teenagers (1989). That was my first experience in front of the camera; I was so nervous.

Natar Ungalaaq was there too because he was working for IBC too. I had no idea that, somewhere in the future, I would be working with these three guys.

When I was asked by Zach about casting for Atanarjuat (2001), I had just started a new job two weeks before. Thankfully, I was told that I could definitely keep my job after filming, so I went for casting. We spent one week practicing and were given the choice of which character we would like to play. I picked the challenging one: Puja. As a director, Zach is pretty calm, even when it’s really busy and stressful. He knows what he wants and what the direction will be, yet he’s also open to suggestions, including those from the actors. I like that he is open to his crew. He never says when he’s tired because he’s already moving on to the next film. He’s always on the go. – Lucy Tulugarjuk

ELDER ARTIST

Zacharias Kunuk OC b. 1957 Iglulik, NU

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A still from Zacharias Kunuk’s Maliglutit (Searchers) (2016) © KINGULLIIT PRODUCTIONS INC.

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30 Artists to Know

Nominators (in alphabetical order)

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Patricia Feheley

David Ford

Ellen Hamilton CM

Marie Horstead

Feheley is the Owner and Director of Feheley Fine Arts and current board member of the Inuit Art Foundation.

A champion of emerging contemporary Inuit artists, she has written extensively for the Quarterly, including, notably, “Modern Language: The Art of Annie Pootoogook” (19.2, Summer 2004), the first comprehensive feature on the artist.

Ford is the General Manager of the Jessie Oonark Centre in Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake), NU, which offers workspace for local artists working in a variety of media. Prior to this position, Ford ran his own gallery, the Okpiktuyuk Art Gallery, where, between 1984 and 2009, he encouraged and championed many artists in the community.

Hamilton is an artist and musician as well as a founding member of Qaggiavuut!, Nunavut’s performing arts advocacy organization. In recent years, Hamilton has turned her attention to film production with award winning films Kajutaijuq: The Spirit That Comes (2014) and Two Lovers and a Bear (2016).

Horstead is the Executive Director of the Great Northern Arts Festival in Inuvik, Inuvialuit Settlement Region, NT. Horstead is a practicing fibre artist who has been working to highlight and support emerging artists in the region for the past two years through the festival and related activities.

NOMINATED:

NOMINATED:

NOMINATED:

Vinnie Karetak

Jimmy Kalinek

Fanny Algaalaga Avatituq

NOMINATED:

Barry Pottle

Heather Igloliorte

Robert Kardosh

Zacharias Kunuk OC Christine Lalonde

Igloliorte is the University Research Chair in Indigenous Art History and Community Engagement and an Assistant Professor of Aboriginal Art History at Concordia University. An active member of the Quarterly’s Editorial Advisory Council, Igloliorte edited a special issue on art from Nunatsiavut in 2015 (28.3–4, Fall/ Winter 2015), the first IAQ edited by an Inuk.

Kardosh is Director of the Marion Scott Gallery in Vancouver, BC, where since 1990 he has curated solo and group exhibitions of work by Inuit artists. Starting in 2005, Kardosh began writing on contemporary artists for the IAQ including Nick Sikkuark (20.1, Spring 2005), Kananginak Pootoogook (22.1, Spring 2007) and most recently Jamasee Pitseolak (30.1, Spring 2017).

Kunuk is an award-winning producer and director. He is also the President and Co-founder of Igloolik Isuma Productions, Canada’s first independent Inuit production company. Kunuk has been featured numerous times in the Quarterly, beginning in 1991, and perhaps most notably on the cover of our 25th anniversary issue (26.1, Spring 2011).

NOMINATED:

NOMINATED:

NOMINATED:

Kelly Fraser

NOMINATED:

Tony Anguhalluq

Lucy Tulugarjuk

Inez Shiwak

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Lalonde is Curator of Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada. In 2014, Lalonde joined the IAF to relaunch the Quarterly as Editor after which she served as Chair of the Editorial Advisory Council. She has written extensively and diversely for the magazine, starting with her first piece “How Can We Understand Inuit Art?” (10.3, Fall 1995).

Fall 2017

To read profiles on these and many other artists visit the IAF’s new Inuit Artist Database online at: iad.inuitartfoundation.org

Paul Machnik

Michael Massie CM

Richard Murdoch

Christa Ouimet

Machnik is the Founder of Studio PM and has been printing etching and aquatints by Inuit artists since 1976. Machnik first visited Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, in 1994 and in the ensuing years he has editioned work by noted artists Kenojuak Ashevak, CC, ON, RCA (1927–2013), Elisapee Ishulutaq, CM, Sheojuk Etidlooie and Germaine Arnaktauyok.

Massie is a Nunatsiavummiut artist known for his use of clever puns and symbolic imagery.

Often working in mixed-media, including bone, metals and stone, Massie’s May-Tea (1991), a sterling silver and maple teapot, was featured on the cover of the Spring 1996 IAQ (11.1), the first of three covers to feature the artist.

Murdoch is the Department Manager of Nunavik Art with La Fédération des coopératives du Nouveau-Québec (FCNQ).

He began working at FCNQ in 1977, unpacking and tagging carvings and, eventually, pricing artwork and repairing damaged carvings. Murdoch has been a longtime subscriber and supporter of the IAQ.

Ouimet is an Inuit Art Specialist with Waddington’s Fine Art Auctioneers & Appraisers. With over twelve years in the Canadian art world, Ouimet has identified and written about countless Inuit works, including her Choice piece for our Spring 2017 (30.1) issue.

She also maintains an educational website for collectors and enthusiasts at katilvik.com.

NOMINATED:

Sandra Hollett

NOMINATED:

Nicotye Samayualie

NOMINATED:

NOMINATED:

Leevan Etok

Julia Manoyok Ekpakohak

RJ Ramrattan

Norman Vorano

John Westren

Ramrattan is the Manager at Canadian Arctic Producers, where, for over twenty years, he has worked closely with Inuit artists to support their individual development. In the spring of 2016, Ramrattan collaborated with the Quarterly to produce a lush photo essay on artist Uriash Puqiqnak, based in Uqsuqtuuq (Gjoa Haven), NU.

Vorano is Professor of Indigenous and Inuit Art History at Queen’s University in Kingston, ON. Vorano is an active curator and writer contributing numerous features to the Quarterly, including “Rock, Paper, Scissors: Canadian Inuit Art in the Cold War” (27.4, Winter 2014) and “Inuit Men, Erotic Art: Erotic Indecencies… That Need Not Here Be Mentioned” (23.3, Fall 2008).

Westren is Manager at Dorset Fine Arts in Toronto, ON, the marketing arm of the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative. For over three decades, Westren has focused on supporting a strong and viable market for Inuit artists.

He has been an active reader of the Quarterly starting with our first issue in 1986 and is a longtime supporter.

NOMINATED:

Saimaiyu Akesuk

NOMINATED:

Daniel Shimout

Anniversary

Victoria Kakuktinniq

NOMINATED:

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30 Artists to Know

FÉLICITATIONS

IAQ

POUR VOTRE

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And helping every customer, from all over the world in our Gallery, in Old Québec and so encouraging the talented Inuit artists from the Canadian Arctic.

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TRIBUTE

In Memoriam: The Inuit Art Quarterly Remembers

PHOTO MUSEUM OF INUIT ART, 2011

PHOTO KENN HARPER, 1991

PHOTO JIMMY MANNING, 1984

Tukiki Manumie (1952–2017)

Tom Webster (1943–2017)

Jack Nuviyak (1971–2016)

Tukiki Manumie was born in Hamilton, ON, where his mother, graphic artist Paunichea (1920–1968), was being treated for tuberculosis. Following her recovery, Manumie and his mother returned to their home of Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, then in a time of radical transformation from an isolated settlement to a thriving modern community.

Manumie came from a family of many artists, including his mother, his father Davidee Mannumi (1919–1979), his grandfather Kiakshuk (1886–1966) and his brothers Aqjangajuk Shaa and Qavavau Manumie.

Though he experimented with graphics and made interesting, highly patterned drawings, Manumie is best known for his serpentinite carvings, a practice he began in the 1970s. Manumie’s distinct, sinuous carvings of birds, fish and scenes of transformations are more suggestive than figurative. His penchant for elongated forms and curved edges sets him apart from his contemporaries and makes his work, which sometimes borders on the abstract, instantly recognizable. Manumie’s work has been exhibited internationally and can be found in major collections in Canada and abroad.

We were sad to learn that Manumie passed away in January 2017. Manumie will be deeply missed by his family, hometown and the entire Inuit art community.

Art dealer and developer Tom Webster first travelled north in 1968 for a teaching position in Kangiqtugaapik (Clyde River), NU, and it was there that he first became involved with Inuit artists, assisting them with marketing their work to southern audiences. After moving to Iqaluit with his wife, Helen, Webster opened a small exhibition space in a former liquor store in the early 1970s which they transformed into the territory’s first museum.

Both believed strongly that a local museum showcasing art from the region was essential.

Working with the territorial government (then the Northwest Territories, today Nunavut), the Websters set aside works for display in the museum. Eventually, the collection found a home at the Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum, established in 1983 in the former Hudson’s Bay building. In addition to being integral members of the museum community, Tom and Helen opened their own gallery space Iqaluit Fine Arts Studio and later an arts wholesale business, Arts Induvik Canada, with locations in both Iqaluit and Montreal.

Tom Webster was deeply committed to his community of Iqaluit and equally so to it’s artists. He is deeply missed throughout both the North and South for his lifelong commitment and steadfast championing of Inuit artists.

Jack Nuviyak is perhaps best known for his contributions to the Matchbox Gallery’s collaborative ceramics, but his talents and contributions to Kangirqliniq Centre for Arts and Learning in Kangiqliniq (Rankin Inlet), NU, and to Inuit art were broad ranging.

He began working at the gallery in junior high school with John Kurok, with whom he worked closely throughout his career.

Eventually, he took on a more active teaching role and helped to encourage others to explore their artistic talents.

Nuviyak was an integral member of the Matchbox Gallery, which promoted collaborative, multidisciplinary work. He was best known for his ceramic sculptures of polar bears, many of which formed the basis of many of the gallery’s most spectacular collaborative works, such as Enchanted Bear (2013) by Nuviyak, Roger Aksadjuak, John Kurok and Leo Napayok.

Less well-known are his solo works, which often employed colourful glazes atypical of the gallery’s more organic style. These pieces show the same sensitivity to human and animal figures as his bears, but also showcase his interest in proportion and proficient skill in showcasing a figure’s heft and volume. He was also a talented printmaker, focusing on colourful stencil works that showcased contemporary realities in his community. Tragically, he passed away in December 2016 at the young age of 45.

His artistic voice, quiet enthusiasm and unique vision are sorely missed.

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Fall 2017

TRIBUTE

Victoria Mamnguqsualuk and Miriam Marealik Qiyuk Born just three years apart, the passing last year of sisters Victoria Mamnguqsualuk and Miriam Marealik Qiyuk has left an indelible mark. These talented, powerful women were the daughters of Jessie Oonark, OC, RCA

SASKATCHEWAN ARCHIVES & SPECIAL COLLECTION

production and a leader in her community of Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake), NU. Although Mamnguqsualuk and Qiyuk spent their childhoods on the land in the Back River

TOP: Victoria Mamnguqsualuk BOTTOM: Miriam Qiyuk

Anniversary

along with their siblings and mother, they transitioned to settlement life. Both began making artwork shortly thereafter, greatly inspired by the work of their mother.

Through stiches on wall hangings and marks on paper, Mamnguqsualuk developed a distinct and unique style, with playful and energetic characters rendered with expressive lines and intricate detail.

Her delicately stitched figures tell traditional stories and depict subjects drawn from Inuit legends, in particular the shaman Kiviuq. Mamnguqsualuk was dedicated to

the evolution of her artistic practice, actively learning new styles or techniques and from a drawing and printmaking program at the Nunavut Arctic College, building on her already extensive talents as an artist.

Qiyuk is known equally for her whimsical wall hangings and stylized carvings. After developing an allergy to wool, the artist turned to carving in her later years, quickly becoming one of the most accomplished Inuit women carvers. Her signature representations of birds, in both wool and stone, are imbued with both playfulness and calm, with the feathered creatures often shown huddled together on cresting waves. Qiyuk’s affinity for birds, understood as symbols of light, fecundity and rebirth, was matched only by her interest in themes of movement and migration.

Both Mamnguqsualuk and Qiyuk leave behind rich artistic legacies that continue to reveal their unique and individual narratives.

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CURATORIAL NOTES

Picturing Arctic Modernity: North Baffin Drawings from 1964 Agnes Etherington Art Centre JANUARY 7 – APRIL 9, 2017 QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY, KINGSTON, ON

Jemima Angelik Nutarak (b. 1915 Mittimatalik) — String Games and Ayagaq 1964 Graphite 50 × 65 cm ALL ARTWORKS COURTESY NORMAN VORANO AND THE CANADIAN MUSEUM OF HISTORY

by Norman Vorano

The early 1960s marked the beginning of a turbulent era for Inuit in the eastern Arctic. Day and residential schools, the arrival of the snowmobile and wood-framed homes, among other changes, brought both opportunity and pain. Families began to move off of the land and into the growing settlements, ending a way of life known for many generations. As Sheila Watt-Cloutier, recently wrote of this period, this “journey into the modern world was not an easy one—and it has left its scars.”¹ It was in this milieu that Terry Ryan, artist and Arts Advisor for the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative in Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, Inuit Art Quarterly

saw the importance of recording Inuit visual expression and thought. Ryan had been working in Kinngait’s fledgling print studio for just three years when, in 1963, he applied to the Canada Council for the Arts for a grant to support a simple but ambitious idea: he proposed to travel to three communities in the North Qikiqtaaluk (Baffin Island), NU, region and their outlaying encampments— Kangiqtugaapik (Clyde River), Mittimatalik (Pond Inlet) and Ikpiarjuk (Arctic Bay)— where he would distribute paper and pencils and invite people to “draw anything”.

By giving people the opportunity to record what they wanted and how they wanted, the 134

project would help document Inuit graphic arts “before the mounting influences of southern civilization in the Arctic replaces the past, and in many cases the still present, mode of living and thinking among the Inuit,” as Ryan wrote in his grant proposal.

In February of 1964, Ryan flew to Kangiqtugaapik from Iqaluit. He hired a dog team and guides, Simeonie Qayak and James Jaypoody, to travel to the encampments where he distributed paper and visited with old friends, like Sakkiasie Arreak. For two weeks, slowed by illness and rough ice, Ryan and his guides travelled more than 400 kilometers by dog team to Mittimatalik.

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The resulting collection of drawings amassed over the course of four months constitutes one of the most important documentary and artistic records of Inuit cultural and social life in the mid-twentieth century.

He continued his venture around the community for several weeks then flew to Ikpiarjuk before retracing his journey back to Kangiqtugaapik, buying up all the drawings on his return.

The resulting collection of drawings amassed over the course of four months constitutes one of the most important documentary and artistic records of Inuit cultural and social life in the mid-twentieth century. All told the collection includes 1,844 drawings created by 87 men and 72 women between the ages of 7 to 70. The drawings are substantive in size and range in style, ambition and complexity. Some are highly representational, with single-point perspective and delicate shading. Others are multi-perspectival, with flattened figures rendered in profile. Thematically, the drawings cover an extraordinarily diverse array of subjects, including historical events culled from memory and oral history, hunting and myths and legends, along with many quotidian snapshots from everyday life.

Most include Inuktut writing, and some, particularly those from Kangiqtugaapik, have no picture at all, but are instead comprised of page upon page of writing that fills the entire sheet. The collection reveals a compulsion to record history and traditional knowledge and reflects the participants’ desire to share their thoughts, hopes, aspirations and anxieties about their lives.

Apart from an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1986, which resulted

in the superbly researched catalogue North Baffin Drawings by Jean Blodgett, the collection has essentially remained out of sight for five decades. I had known of this collection through Blodgett’s catalogue, but little did I know of its full richness, since the catalogue only included 75 reproductions.

In late 2011, when I was Curator of Inuit Art at the Canadian Museum of Civilization (now the Canadian Museum of History [CMH]) in Gatineau, QC, I began discussions with Ryan about the possibility of acquiring the drawings for the national collection.

I approached the North Qikiqtaaluk communities and found broad support, as they felt it important to ensure the collection would be kept intact as well as accessible for study and appreciation in a public museum. In early 2014, the entire collection of drawings was approved for acquisition. That summer, I left the museum to join Queen’s University.

The project continued to move forward, now with the support of both institutions.

From our earliest discussions, the communities of Mittimatalik and Kangiqtugaapik expressed an interest in working with me to create an exhibition around the collection.

I sent digital images of all the drawings to both communities and found institutional partners in Piqqusilirivvik, the Inuit Cultural Learning Facility in Kangiqtugaapik, and the Pond Inlet Archives. In 2015, with the support of the then Director of Piqqusilirivvik Jonathan Palluq, I visited Kangiqtugaapik and began to pour through the collection

Installation view of Picturing Arctic Modernity: North Baffin Drawings from 1964 at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen’s University, 2017 PHOTO PAUL LITHERLAND

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LEFT

Cornelius (Kooneeloosee) Nutarak (1912–2007 Mittimatalik) — Preparing Sealskins 1964 Graphite 50 × 65 cm

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Martha Coronik Akoomalik (1912–2002 Mittimatalik) — We Are Using Another Way of Life Today 1964 Graphite 50 × 65 cm

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with educators Joelie Sanguyuk and Davidee Iqaqrialu and elder Ilkoo Angutikjuak. The visit began to make clear the vast scale of traditional knowledge embedded in this drawing collection, as well as the enormity of the task ahead of us. Huddled around a wide-screen monitor, the group would linger over a single drawing for 40 minutes, carefully deliberating the exact meanings of an Inuktut word seldom used today. In this initial consultation meeting, the broad contour of an exhibition was hashed out: rather than attempt to provide a representative survey of the collection, based on southern aesthetic standards, the exhibition would call upon the contemporary experiences of community members who would select and discuss a drawing on video.

After receiving approval from the Queen’s University General Research Ethics Board and the Nunavut Research Institute, the work to develop an exhibition began.

Tina Kuniliusi, from Ittaq, the cultural heritage organization in Kangiqtugaapik, and Philippa Ootoowak at the Pond Inlet Archives in Mittimatalik helped coordinate the project in their respective communities. In March and April of 2016, I made trips to both Kangiqtugaapik and Mittimatalik to begin interviewing and filming for the exhibition.

In Mittimatalik, Queen’s University art history Anniversary

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Toongalook (1912–1967 Ikpiarjuk) — What I Had Seen a Long Time Ago 1964 Graphite 65 × 50 cm

Ilkoo Angutikjuak, Joelie Sanguyuk and Davidee Iqaqrialu examining digital copies of the drawings in Kangiqtugaapik, July 16, 2015

graduate student Rosemary Legge was on camera duty, while CMH Project Developer Jean-François Léger contributed important input on framing the interviews.

In Kangiqtugaapik, the videography, translating and rough editing was done by staff at Ittaq, Mike Jaypoody and Robert Kautak.

For the filmmaker Mike Jaypoody, the project was especially personal since it was his father, James Jaypoody, who provided guide services to Ryan in 1964.

At the Nattinnak Visitor Centre, we held a general public presentation, as well as one for elders, to share and discuss the collection.

These meetings sparked much discussion, personal reflection and surprise. Few young people even knew the drawings existed and many elders had not seen their own drawings since they were created more than 50 years ago, nor did they realize the full scope and historical importance of the collection in its entirety. It was revelatory.

Fourteen individuals were interviewed on camera for the exhibition, which included 50 framed drawings representing the work of 23 artists. A total of 43 short video interviews were created, each of which was linked to a specific drawing. This approach was taken to give visitors a more intimate experience and to bring into focus the varied ways the drawings are significant to contemporary 137

identities. In the exhibition space, videos were presented on two touch monitors with attached media drives, a plug-and-play method of delivery that would work in the North, where there is a lack of high-speed broadband. In addition to the two monitors, the videos were also made accessible in the gallery via quick response (QR) codes linked to an exhibition website that allowed audiences to view the videos on their own mobile devices as well as making them accessible to a virtual audience who could not visit the exhibit or spend the entire 90 minutes that would be needed to view every video in the gallery. Also included was an in-gallery booklet, which included condensed translations of all the writing on the drawings. This was helpful for audience members because many interviewees often used a drawing’s text as a jumping off point for personal reflection, eschewing a more straightforward explanation of the image. The entire exhibition—videos, website, texts and booklets—was produced in English, French and Inuktut.

The process of selecting drawings was fluid, with the standards and criteria shaped by those involved. Because the entire drawing collection numbers over 1,800 works, I made an initial rough selection of some 120 works when I first went north to conduct interviews.

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Jacob Peterloosie (b. 1930 Mittimatalik) — Tormenting a Polar Bear 1964 Graphite 65 × 50 cm

Installation view of Picturing Arctic Modernity: North Baffin Drawings from 1964 at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen’s University, 2017 PHOTO PAUL LITHERLAND

“The drawings are unique, they are different. They are about Inuit history, the language, the culture—clothing, living, legends, animals, everything for men and women.”

ELIJAH TIGULLARAQ

However, I soon realized that people wanted to see and discuss many other works not on my initial list. My potted questions simply served to initiate conversation, which invariably took off in unanticipated but fascinating directions as people scanned the rest of the collection (which I had on my computer), stopping on drawings that piqued their interest. Several of the more senior interviewees would quietly examine a drawing for several moments, read the text on the front and back and, with a nearly imperceptible nod for the camera operator, break into a thoughtful reflection. Some interviewees, like Ham Kadloo, spoke in short, punchy bursts that were ideally suited to the exhibition format. Others interviewees, like Ilkoo Angutikjuak, used the drawings to launch into longer, meandering stories and recollections.

In the end, the interviews guided the final selection of drawings. Individuals often Inuit Art Quarterly

picked drawings that they had a personal connection to, such as Solomon Koonoo discussing Jacob Peterloosie’s drawing Tormenting a Polar Bear. Peterloosie’s picture depicts several youth—one of whom was a young Koonoo—running away from an attacking bear. One of the youth had fallen at the bear’s feet, with his gun knocked away.

Koonoo’s interview offered a first-person recollection, not just of the dramatic moment captured in the drawing, but also of the events leading up to the bear attack and afterward. Koonoo ends his interview with a self-deprecating chuckle: “It was the first time we got a bear, and we had someone bitten by it!” Joanna Kunnuk, discussing the late Jemima Angelik Nutarak’s drawing of sewing patterns, spoke eloquently of the responsibilities of women, while acknowledging that although she takes great pride in her own sewing today, “younger people are not as knowledgeable of the old patterns.”

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Many commentators, young or old, saw the drawings as repositories of traditional Inuit knowledge. The linguist and educator Elijah Tigullaraq said during an interview, “The drawings are unique; they are different. They are about Inuit history, the language, the culture—clothing, living, legends, animals, everything for men and women.”

Editing of the videos took place in Kangiqtugaapik and Kingston, ON, while copies of the raw interviews remained in both communities. Given the difficulty of the language (the syllabic writing in 1964 did not use finals), gender differences and regional dialects, a total of four translators were employed to translate the drawings and the videos, the latter of which was accomplished via periodic uploads to YouTube and regular email. Adding to the complication of working with many individuals, translators, interpreters and organizations in Nunavut was the fact that this exhibition was Fall 2017

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Lydia Atagootak (b. 1913 Mittimatalik) — Women’s Responsibilities Then and Now 1964 Graphite 50 × 65 cm

NOTE

¹ Sheila Watt-Cloutier, The Right to Be Cold: One Woman’s Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic and the Whole Planet (Toronto: Penguin Canada Books, 2015).

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co-produced by the Agnes Etherington Art Centre and the Canadian Museum of History. To say the exhibition had many moving parts would be an understatement.

In January of 2017, Picturing Arctic Modernity: North Baffin Drawings from 1964 opened at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen’s University. Between August 26 and October 8 of 2017, a condensed selection from the exhibition will be at the Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum in Iqaluit before segments are sent to Mittimatalik and Kangiqtugaapik. The entire exhibition opens at the Canadian Museum of History in February of 2018, followed by other venues across Canada.

Many of the elders and youth in Kangiqtugaapik and Mittimatalik acknowledged Terry Ryan’s foresight and expressed heartfelt gratitude for his work in soliciting and preserving these drawings. But what also became apparent during the interviews was the fact that many northerners remain largely alienated from their own cultural heritage in

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southern museums. Exhibitions are fleeting, but evidence shows that museum collections can play a profoundly transformative and positive role in the reclamation of Indigenous cultural identity, health and social well-being.

Although the acquisition of the drawings and the collaborative development of Picturing Arctic Modernity took several years, it is really just a starting point. I am now working with various cultural and heritage organizations in Nunavut to discuss the possibility of developing a reciprocal research network around this collection that would use contemporary digital technologies to link northern communities with the museum and Queen’s University. Such a network will empower communities, foster cross-cultural and cross-generational understandings and provide ongoing northern access to these drawings, so that they can be used in schools, by heritage groups and by other researchers.

The North Qikiqtaaluk drawings have already traced an incredible journey, but their most important journey may be still to come.

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Canadian and Indigenous Art: 1968 to Present National Gallery of Canada JUNE 15, 2017 – ONGOING OTTAWA, CANADA

by Lindsay Nixon

I’m always a little nervous when visiting institutions like the National Gallery of Canada (NGC) to view survey exhibitions that include Indigenous art. I often find myself unsatisfied, and sometimes even enraged, by the way Indigenous works are presented in Canada’s major institutions.

Contextualized with basic didactics that often avoid delving into complex subject matter, it would seem Indigenous artists are widely curated for non-Indigenous audiences.

Inuit Art Quarterly

I was therefore pleasantly surprised with the thoughtful curation of Inuit work throughout the NGC’s rehang of their contemporary Canadian and Indigenous Art galleries. Still, I found myself, as I often do when looking at galleried collections of Inuit art, craving a new perspective that highlights the radically progressive vision of Inuit art that I know to be experimental, diverse and flourishing, a reimagined and non-reified Inuit art cannon complete with 140

gender and sexual diversity. I found myself wondering, Why do we keep leaving Inuit art in the past, and what are the colonial implications of doing so?

Many parts of the rehang provided challenging work and curation. Manasie Akpaliapik’s whalebone carving Untitled (1991), for instance, welcomes you in the first room of the show and draws a strong emotional response with its evocative portrayal of alcoholism. Akpaliapik’s sculpture illustrates the head of an Inuk disrupted by a bottle protruding from their skull with a hand raised to their exasperated face. The work is both confrontational, forcing viewers to consider complex and embodied colonial affect, and simultaneously considerate and empathetic to Inuit kin. In a similar vein, William Noah’s drawing Evil Shaman Giving Tuberculosis to Innocent Victim (c. 1970) depicts the onset of a foreign disease, brought to the North by colonizers, as an evil shaman. Indeed!

I was excited to find the integration of the film Qaggiq (Gathering Place) (1989)

by Zacharias Kunuk, OC, into a section comprised of media art. It was refreshing to see Kunuk’s work integrated in the rehang in such a way. Filmed inside an igloo, Kunuk’s video presents moments of intimacy, sharing and community care—even a rambunctious and light-hearted Iglulingmiut ritual of insult-hurling—that shines a light into the homes and hearts of Inuit, humanizing Inuit communities to an often otherwise voyeuristic, commodifying and at times fetishistic settler audience.

Inuit women are also well represented in the rehang, exhibiting work from the Canadian women’s art movement— Elisapee Ishulutaq, CM, Pitseolak Ashoona, OC, RCA (c. 1904–1983), Helen Kalvak, CM (1901–1984), Napachie Pootoogook (1938–2002), Jessie Oonark, OC, RCA (1906–1985) and Kenojuak Ashevak, CC, ON, RCA (1927–2013), to name a few— a refreshing approach, considering that the pervasive narrative of Canadian feminist art has long been predominated by white women. The curators have boldly recontextualized embodied feminist art, popularized in the 1970s and onwards, as Fall 2017

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The curators have boldly recontextualized embodied feminist art, popularized in the 1970s and onwards.

A lineage of Inuit womanism emerges, derived from the body and visualizing the beautiful present of Inuit women’s communities.

Pitseolak Ashoona (c. 1904–1989 Kinngait) — OPPOSITE PAGE

The Eyes of a Happy Woman c. 1974 Coloured felt-tip pen 66.2 × 51 cm PHOTOS NATIONAL GALLERY OF CANADA ARTWORK REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION DORSET FINE ARTS

a space not solely for white women artists.

A lineage of Inuit womanism emerges, derived from the body and visualizing the beautiful presence of Inuit women’s communities. Oviloo Tunnillie’s (1949–2014) serpentinite Skier (1993), with its sexy Lycra-clad thighs and buttocks, stood out for me—femme power, if you will.

Inuit art has long been pushed to the margins of contemporary art—often presumed inherently non-contemporary because of the continued use of traditional

artistic methods and materials or awkwardly integrated into larger Indigenous art canons.

So, it was a welcome shift to see Inuit art curated with such thoughtfulness, prominence and reverence. While the rehang does have gaps—I would have liked to have seen more works in varying contemporary media— the show indicates a commitment to considering Inuit art as limitless, dynamic and very much a pronouncement of Inuit futures. It will be exciting to see the NGC’s presentation of Inuit art grow with this new vision.

Oviloo Tunnillie (1949–2014 Kinngait) — RIGHT

Skier 1993 Serpentinite 30 × 31 × 44 cm

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Viva Arte Viva 57th Venice Biennale

Installation view of Kananginak Pootoogook’s Untitled (He thinks he has run out of gas, but the engine is shot) (2009), Untitled (Successful walrus hunt) (2009) and Untitled (Taking pictures of the Bowhead whale) (2009) in Viva Arte Viva, Venice, 2017

MAY 13 – NOVEMBER 26, 2017 VENICE, ITALY

PHOTO ITALO RONDINELLA

by Carla Taunton

Kananginak Pootoogook, RCA (1935–2010) is the first Inuit artist to be exhibited at the Venice Biennale, regarded as the most prestigious international art exhibition.

As a catalyst moment, the inclusion of Pootoogook’s powerful and pertinent work as part of Centre Pompidou Chief Curator Christine Macel’s Viva Arte Viva exposes the global arts community to the aesthetic legacies of Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, and the ways in which Pootoogook’s art practice visually documented the profound changes to Inuit ways of life.

Pootoogook’s ten ink and coloured pencil drawings are installed in the Pavilion of the Earth at the Biennale’s Arsenale, which is one of nine guiding thematic group installations, or what Macel has described as Inuit Art Quarterly

Trans-Pavilions (referencing the transnational identities of the 120 artist participants).

Macel’s centring of this pavilion on “environmental, animal and planetary utopias, observations and dreams” raises questions about Pootoogook’s inclusion in relation to the Biennale and, more specifically, this thematic pavilion.

The drawings were produced in the later part of Pootoogook’s career between 2006 and 2010. They highlight the artist’s commitment to social commentary as well as foreground historic and contemporary Inuit lived experiences, including family histories and relations, living on and with the land, the legacies of colonial trauma in the Canadian Arctic and climate change.

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such as Untitled (He thinks he has run out of gas, but the engine is shot) (2009) as well as collective community experiences of hunting, life on the land, and colonial history, illustrated in Untitled (Successful walrus hunt) (2009), invite a global audience to witness snapshot moments of Inuit life from the artist’s perspective. While it is clear that Pootoogook’s work centralizes the Nunavut territory and Inuit ways of engaging with the land, Macel’s notion of “observations and dreams” runs the risk of dismissing thousands of years of Inuit presence, intergenerational knowledge and ongoing commitment to what is now termed environmentalism.

Troublingly, the pavilion does little to critically engage with global settler colonialism and the ways in which Indigenous Fall 2017

Authentic Inuit Art from Nunavut

communities have endured and continue to negotiate and resist.

Pootoogook’s subjects exemplify both a critical awareness of the taste culture of the southern art market and the history of art as social agent and vehicle for cultural sovereignty and decolonization. For example, in Untitled (RCMP officer asking how old they are and when they were born. They were given disc #E7-. Their child is scared of the policeman) (2007), Pootoogook brings awareness to the difficult history of mandating numbered identification tags for Inuit begun in 1941 by the Canadian Federal Government and reminds viewers such as myself of the ongoing collective agency, as well as the subtle and overt resistances (political and cultural) evoked by Inuit in response to colonization.

The selected drawings reinforce Pootoogook’s strategy of Inuit self-determination, exemplified in Untitled (Self-portrait of Kananginak drawing a wolf) (2009) and Untitled (Kananginak and his wife Shooyoo in their home) (2010), and Untitled (In 1935 the future was uncertain, but today it’s much different) (2010), which depicts an Inuk wearing a white parka with red and black piping, a Montreal Canadiens toque and sunglasses, lying on the grassy land with large flower petals in the foreground.

Collectively, these drawings resist/contest Eurocentric, ethnographic visual representations of Inuit, and they contribute to a living archive of self-representation. Also at play is how Pootoogook’s works claim space for selfreflexive and at times humourous, playful commentary that speaks directly to community experience.

As a significant moment in the history of Inuit art, Pootoogook’s presence at Venice as the inaugural Inuit artist, calls for celebration and clearly honours the dedication and prolific legacy of his career. It also puts forward an opportunity for reflection in the local context of Canada to examine the representation of Inuit arts across Canadian cultural institutions, and, to that end, fosters a crucial commentary on the necessity of making strong commitments to exhibiting Inuit art in productive and ethical ways across our institutions and exhibition programs.

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documenta 14 Various sites

Installation view of three drawings from 1974 to 1989 by Keviselie/Hans Ragnar Mathisen at the Museum of Natural History in the Ottoneum, Kassel, Germany, for documenta 14

APRIL 8 – SEPTEMBER 16, 2017 ATHENS, GREECE / KASSEL, GERMANY

PHOTO FRED DOTT © KEVISELIE (HANS RAGNAR MATHISEN) / VG BILD-KUNST, BONN 2017

by Zoë Heyn-Jones

documenta 14, arguably the world’s largest— and most debated—recurring contemporary art exhibition, held every five years, unfolded between Athens, Greece, and Kassel, Germany, for 163 days from April to September 2017. With overlapping timelines and a double contribution from each artist, documenta 14 attempted to reconfigure and dismantle the conventions of the quinquennial and also comment on and activate the relationship between the two cities and nations. A series of texts found in the exhibition’s companion reader, Documents of Empire/Documents of Decoloniality, offers a possible cypher with which we could attempt to decode the exhibition’s structural labyrinth. From the Indian Act to the Treaty Inuit Art Quarterly

of Waitangi, these primary sources suggest documenta 14 is imbued with an overarching impulse to unsettle. The Sámi Act is one of these texts.

In 1978, the Sámi Artist Group (Britta Marakatt-Labba, Keviselie/Hans Ragnar Mathisen, Synnøve Persen), established a collective in the village of Máze (Masi), Norway. After studying and practicing in the South of Norway and Sweden, these artists returned to their ancestral land with the artistic and political imperative to “reclaim the human worth and pride belonging to Indigenous peoples and to build a nation: Sápmi.” The group’s work at documenta 14 captured the Sámi’s (ongoing) struggle for sovereignty and self-determination.

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Synnøve Persen’s tricolour, redyellow-blue flag pieces invoke untold histories of flags as both the primary props in the performance of dispossession and as flags flown in resistance. Persen’s stitched flag was flown during the 1981 protests over the planned construction of a hydroelectric dam and the ensuing hunger strike at the Norwegian Parliament.

Persen’s work was complimented by Britta Marakatt-Labba’s delicate embroideries depicting Sámi cosmology and history. The map, as another colonial tool, is reworked

by Keviselie/Hans Ragnar Mathisen. For almost six decades, Keviselie has collected Sámi place names and reinscribed maps to offer a geographical path through the Fall 2017

Installation view of works from the series Sámi Flag Project (1977)

by Synnøve Persen at the EMST—National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece, for documenta 14 PHOTO MATHIAS VÖLZKE

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2017 CAPE DORSET Annual Print Collection

Sámi homeland that extends across Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.

Architect-artist Joar Nango presented the installationperformance/social stage European Everything, created in collaboration with various artists and craftspeople.

Extending Nango’s long-term research on self-sufficiency, vernacular architecture and DIY self-reliance, the travelling theatre was developed in a scrapyard in the Eleonas area of Athens, with participation from trash collectors and local Roma and migrant communities. The work acts as an ever-evolving platform by hosting a variety of performers, for instance, Roma theatre artists exploring the potentialities of borderless feminist states through futuristic plays.

Máret Ánne Sara’s ongoing installation project Pile o’ Sápmi exhibits Sámi resilience and reuse, employing the skulls of 200 culled reindeer heads (complete with the violent markers of bullet holes). First installed in February 2016 outside the Indre Finnmark District Court, Pile o’ Sápmi accompanied the legal proceedings initiated by the artist’s brother, Jovsset Ánte Sara, against the Norwegian government in response to the forced cull that amounted to bankruptcy for Sámi herders. Sara won the trial, with a verdict confirming that per the European Convention on Human Rights the cull violates his property rights. Unsurprisingly, the Norwegian state has appealed the case.

By highlighting the circulation of objects in service of—and compromised by—empire, documenta 14 has allowed some consideration for how these works perform their roles in and through their commodification, reiteration and transformation. And while the efficacy of spectacular art events like documenta to do this work is fervently debated, the new forms of sovereignty built and activated by Sámi artists will continue to compel us to rethink the powerful potential of objects and images in the advancement of Indigenous sovereignty.

QUVIANAQTUK PUDLAT Sparring Owls, 2017 stonecut 68.8 x 48.6 cm

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Updates and highlights from the world of Inuit art and culture

His Excellency David Johnston presents the Meritorious Service Cross (Civil Division) to Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, M.SC, in recognition of outstanding Indigenous leadership, July 2017 PHOTO MCPL VINCENT CARBONNEAU, RIDEAU HALL © OSGG

Iconic Igloo Tag Trademark Transferred to the Inuit Art Foundation

Inuit Recognized for Outstanding Leadership in Ottawa On June 19, 2017, at Rideau Hall in Ottawa, ON, Governor General David Johnston awarded crosses and medals for Meritorious Service (Civil Division) to commend outstanding Indigenous leadership and to “raise awareness of Indigenous histories, cultures, achievements and concerns”. Activist and filmmaker Alethea Arnaquq-Baril was presented with a Meritorious Service Cross for inspiring Inuit communities to reconnect with their ancestral values and traditions, while NHL hockey player Jordin Tootoo and traditional Inuit tattoo artist Hovak Johnston were each awarded Meritorious Service Medals. Along with Marjorie Tahbone of Alaska, Johnston is co-founder of the Inuit Tattoo Revitalization Project, which is credited with “inspir[ing] a new generation to carry on [the] tradition”.

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The internationally recognized Igloo Tag Trademark, established in 1958 by the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (now Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada) to authenticate Inuit artwork, was officially transferred to the Inuit Art Foundation. Now led by Nunatsiavummiut Bryan Winters, this is the first time in the trademark’s history that it is being managed

by Inuit directly. “It’s time for Inuit to take over this program,” explains Winters. “We need to determine for ourselves who we are and how we are represented. I look forward to assisting Inuit in creating a program that will allow us to be able to do that in our own image.”

The transfer took place in an effort to increase the Inuit community’s ability to manage artmaking, both to benefit Inuit artists and to help preserve the value of Inuit cultural heritage. According to the Honourable Carolyn Bennett, Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs, the “announcement highlights [that] the Government of Canada is committed to work in partnership with Inuit on subjects that matter to them. The Igloo Tag supports Inuit artists and culture, and I am pleased that it will now be managed by an Inuit-led organization.” Natan Obed, National Inuit Leader and President of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, said, “ITK fully supports the Inuit Art Foundation taking administrative control of the Igloo Tag from the Government of Canada.”

The Inuit Art Foundation looks forward to conducting widespread artist consultations as part of the Igloo Tag Trademark program to ensure the tag’s new administrative direction accurately reflects the needs of Inuit artists and their access to the market.

Reneltta Arluk appointed Director of Indigenous Arts at the Banff Centre The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity recently appointed actor and playwright Reneltta Arluk as its new Director of Indigenous Arts. Arluk, who is also the Fall 2017

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founder of Akpik Theatre and the first Indigenous director to participate in the Stratford Festival, will be responsible for ensuring programs at the Centre meet the needs of Indigenous artists.

“I am looking to open up spaces,” Arluk said. “I will be engaging mid-career to experienced artists [but also supporting] accessibility at the community level for the Indigenous communities that surround Banff, including the Stoney Nakoda, Tsuut’ina and Blackfoot. And although there have been good connections happening between the centre and the North, it will be a nice new focus to have an Inuit perspective. I’m interested in supporting collaboration on a national and international scale. And I’m excited that the Banff Centre wants to support that.”

Arluk, who is of Cree, Dene and Inuvialuit descent, will join the centre beginning November 1, 2017.

Tanya Tagaq Awarded Honorary Doctorate

by Laval University Award-winning musician Tanya Tagaq, OC, was presented with an honorary doctorate in music by Laval University on June 18, 2017, for her achievements in paving new ground in the music industry. This is the second honorary degree for the artist, the first being

Anniversary

from her alma mater the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2015. “It’s an enormous honour for me to receive this honorary doctorate,” said Tagaq in her statement.

“My musical career, which started in 2001, has been built on 16 years of effort and perseverance. Today, I would like to thank Laval University for having helped me realize my dreams.”

in creating space and being an integral advocate for performing arts in Nunavut. She also works with Inuit elders and educators to assist in bridging the gap between generations to ensure music, storytelling and dancing are passed on to future generations.

She is currently spearheading Qaggiavuut!’s efforts to build a performing arts centre in Nunavut.

Artist Michael Massie and Ellen Hamilton of Qaggiavuut! Receive Orders of Canada

Jesse Tungilik Hired as New Executive Director of the Nunavut Arts and Crafts Association

Artist Michael Massie and artist and founding member of Qaggiavuut! Ellen Hamilton were recently appointed to the Order of Canada.

Massie was made a Member to the Order for his work as a sculptor and silversmith, while Hamilton was appointed for her promotion of Inuit arts and culture.

Massie has created clever and, at times, surreal pieces that have broken boundaries and helped to increase public attention on artists in Nunatsiavut. His work has been collected by major public institutions, including the National Gallery of Canada. Massie is an active supporter of the arts in his community, and continuously encourages and advocates for Inuit artists.

Since 2008, Hamilton, who is a director, producer and musician, has been involved

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In May 2017, the Nunavut Arts and Crafts Association (NACA) hired Iqaluit-based artist Jesse Tungilik as its new Executive Director following the departure of NACA’s previous Executive Director, Rowena House, who announced her resignation in December 2016. Tungilik stated, “I look forward to using my experience as an Inuit artist to give voice to other artists who otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity and to advocate for projects and initiatives that benefit Nunavut artists.” After a successful Nunavut Arts Festival that ran from July 4 to July 9, attended by both local community members and those travelling to Iqaluit for the festival, it looks as though he is already making a significant impact.

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LAST LOOK

Jessie Oonark Qamani’tuaq

Some 14 years after the Canadian flag made its official debut in 1965, this work, created in the twilight of the prolific career of Jessie Oonark, OC, RCA (1906–1985), reimagines the ubiquitous red-and-white maple leaf as background to a simple line-drawn figurative portrait.

The deep red of the national ensign is swapped for a rich cerulean blue, while the outermost edges are trimmed in a vibrant yellow. Twenty years before the official creation of the territory of Nunavut and its distinctive flag, the artist presciently captured the palette meant to represent the riches of the land, sea and sky.

The result is a playfully subversive reorienting of the Canadian experience, casting an Inuk, framed in delicate rose pink, as the central character. In this work, Oonark’s clear and purposeful line reminds us of the original inhabitants of this place, the “true North strong and free”.

Jessie Oonark (1906–1985 Qamani’tuaq) — Inuk Flag c. 1979 Coloured pencil 38.2 × 56.5 cm NATIONAL GALLERY OF CANADA © PUBLIC TRUSTEE OF NUNAVUT. ESTATE OF JESSIE OONARK

Inuit Art Quarterly

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Fall 2017

KENOJUAK ASHEVAK & TIM PITSIULAK

DRAWi NG Li FE ON VIEW UNTIL JANUARY 14, 2018

Kenojuak Ashevak (Canadian (Inuit) 1927-2013), Untitled, 2004-2005, coloured pencil and felt pen on paper Private Collection © Dorset Fine Arts

123 King Street West, Hamilton L8P 4S8 • 905.527.6610 info@artgalleryofhamilton.com • artgalleryofhamilton.com

Tim Pitsiulak (Canadian (Inuit) 1967-2016), The Day Before, 2015, coloured pencil on paper Private Collection © Dorset Fine Arts

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Samonie Toonoo, Hip-Hop Dancer, Cape Dorset, 2007. Image: Toni Hafkenscheid.

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