Kananginak Pootoogook : “We like to keep our culture through carvings and prints. Those art pieces are very valuable : they tell of the past.” (1)

Pitaloosie Saila : “You don’t just do drawings […] you express yourself. It is also a way of life, a part of life. Life is sometimes heavy […] you have to be able to express yourself. Some of it comes out through art […] I am just doing what I know how to do best.” (2)

Qaumak Mikkigaq : “It feels very good when you are comfortable in feeling good about your carvings especially when other people like your carvings. There and then you know you can do a good carving each and every time you begin one.” (3)

Kenojuak Ashevak : “I have a style of drawing that doesn’t belong to anybody but me. It is my own and I own it but people can try to copy it but they can’t. They try but they can’t. It would be hard to express how little I desire to imitate anybody else’s work. I have no desire on earth to do that. At the same time I don’t really want my style, what I feel belongs to me, to be imitated by anyone else. I feel that that’s fair. I’m not going to copy anyone else.” (4)

Kananginak Pootoogook : “I can never start drawing unless I have something in my head. Only when I really clearly see the pictures in my head do I start drawing. I don’t really like the drawings that are too colourful. The thing I really like is when the colours are matching or when they’re almost the same – when the colours are like reality.” (5)

Taqialuk Nuna : “I really enjoy carving when I am not hunting. I have been carving fro about ten years. I did my first carving when I was a young boy, around eight years old. I used to watch my father carve, but I didn’t do a lot because of school and work. […] I have learned to approach my work from the shapes that I see in the stone […] without thinking too much about how I though it should look. When I carve, I go along with the shape that is formed as I chip away at the stone.” (6)

Références :
(1) Jean Blodgett, 1991, In Cape Dorset we do it this way : three decades of Inuit printmaking, Kleinburg, McMichael Canadian art collection, p. 115.
(2) Odette Leroux (ed.), Inuit Women Artists, Voices from Cape Dorset, Hull : Canadian Museum of Civilizations, 1995, p. 27.
(3) Ibid., p. 25.
(4) Jean Blodgett, 1985, Kenojuak, Toronto : Firefly Books, p. 74-75
(5) Dorset Fine Arts (ed.), 2007, Cape Dorset Print : A retrospective. Fifty Years of Printmaking at the Kinngait Studios, Toronto : éd. Pomegranate, p. 184-185.
(6) Department of Indian Affaires and Northern Development (Canada)/Ministère des Affaires Indiennes du Nord Canadien, 1997, Transitions. Contemporary Canadian Indian and Inuit Art / L’art contemporain des Indiens et des Inuit du Canada, p.48.

The Kinngait community is located on the south west coast of Baffin Island on the Foxe Peninsula of Baffin in Nunavut territory (Canadian Arctic). 1236 persons live there (Statistic Canada 2006) including about 95% of Inuit and 5% of Qallunaat (non Inuit).

Qallunaat people generally use the English name “Cape Dorset” to talk about the community instead of its inuit name : Kinngait which means in inuktitut “mountains”. Kinngait Hamlet is well known on the international sphere as the most famous centre of artistic creation in the Canadian Arctic. Kinngait was the first Canadian arctic community to produce drawings and prints; the graphic arts programme has been launched in 1956.

The West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative was founded in 1959 by Inuit own-selves to control the artworks distribution outside the Inuit territory and redistribute locally the profit of sales. Over the next five years, twenty co-ops were established across the Canadian Artic, ranging from Cape Dorset in the east to Holman Island in the west. Today, there are thirty-five which a small group leads even today artistic programs.

The artistic production - like drawing, print or carving - has been successfully developed in Kinngait, thanks to the Inuit artists’ will and enthusiasm as well as to James and Alma Houston’s presence from 1951 to 1962 and Terry Ryan, first as an arts advisor in 1960 and then as manager of the West Baffin Eskimo Co-Operative from 1962 – 2001. The Dorset Fine Arts was established in Toronto in 1978 as the sale marketing division of the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative.

Over three generations of artists have produced sculpture, drawings and prints from Kinngait. As of 2005 over a dozen artists from Cape Dorset have been made members of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts: Abraham Etungat, Pitseolak Ashoona, Pauta Saila, Kenojuak Ashevak, Osuitok Ipeelee, Kananginak Pootoogook, Mayureak Ashoona, Kiawak Ashoona, Paulaussie Pootoogook, Toonoo Sharky, Pitaloosie Saila, Aqjangajuk Shaa and Oviloo Tunnillie.

Today, the artistic creation and the sale of the works represent for people who live in Kinngait a major source of incomes; but more still, artworks act as supports of the elders’ memory and narratives for the future generations.

More detail on this website : www.dorsetfinearts.com

The representation of a mother and her child in sculpture is not a frequent subject in the Inuit art contrary to the qallunaat art (not Inuit) where this topic appears in the religious as profane representations. This theme remains relatively recent in the history of Inuit art although it is more present in contemporary graphics art than in sculpture.

Formerly, the miniature representation of human characters (inunnguaq it inuktitut) only consisted of the making of shaman amulets and toys for the children, in the form of small ivory or bone carvings and skins dolls. It is only from 1950s with the launch of the artistic programs in the Arctic that raises the stone sculpture of humans.

Carved characters in stone are mostly hunter with or without game in small size. This topic is particularly spread, especially since the artists are above all hunters, formerly as today ; their artistic creations are drawn from their own experiences.

Inuit women also involve in the artistic production: if formerly they dedicated themselves more in drawing, in tapestry or in the clothing making, women of the Arctic communities want to diversify their activities while increasing their incomes and some of them started carving…. Thus, new iconographic topics appear with more feminine subjects such as the maternity and the mother to the child or feminine activities in camps.

Sat or up, the mother is represented almost always with her child in the hood of her amauti (feminine jacket): only the head of the baby is then visible. It is about an identical very strong symbol because the amauti remains the feminine traditional garment par excellence, in a society where the maternity is very valued. This mode of representation is the most the common, even if sometimes, the mother carries her child in the arms or holds him/her the hand if this one is bigger.

The mother and child topic is one of Mary Usutsiaq’s favourite subjects, from Kinngait. Nevertheless, the artists who sculpture the theme of the maternity are not exclusively women: Booby Aupaluqtuq, a young sculptor from Inujjuaq, represents this theme among the others.

http://www.inuitartzone.com/fr/artistes/210/bobby-aupaluktuk/oeuvres/

Three 2008 print collections recently left the art studios from Nunavut and are available for purchase in the Inuit art galleries: the Kinngait 2008 Spring Print Release, the Panniqtuuq 2008 Annual Print Collection and the 2008 Qamanittuaq Print Portfolio.

Kinngait 2008 Spring Print Release

Since its first print collection released in 1956 at the Kinngait Studio, the graphic artists -drawers and printmakers- carry out there each year an annual print collections and a spring print release. The Kinngait 2008 spring release was presented to the public last week. This collection gathers together nine works made by seven talented artists : Qavavau Mannumi, Itii Putuguq, Arnaqu Ashevak, Suvinai Asuna, Jutai Tunu, Tiivi Ningiukuluk, Kinialli Siasi.

Some of the artists contribute to the Kinngait’s print collection for the first time. Each brings their own style with a contemporary iconography thus, sharing their own vision of the world. Represented topics bound to the Inuit contemporary way of life such as Christian religion, currents clothes or music.

Panniqtuuq 2008 Annual Print Collection

Thirteen prints make up this 2008 collection realized by nine artists : Abigail Uutuuva, Julli Atagujuq, Lypa Pitisulak, Gabriel Bourassa, Ilisapi Usulutaq, Jusia Maniapik, Giitalu Akulukjuk, David Amstrong and Andrew Qappik. For this print collection, the artists draw from the traditional knowledge with sensitivity linked to shamanism, myths, game and their individual experiences. Three practices has been used for this collection released : etching, stencil and relief print.

Drawers and printmakers in Panniqtuuq have been involved in printmaking since 1974, when the art studio opened. But a new era in arts and crafts management and development in Pangnirtung began in 1991 with the opening of the Uqqurmiut Centre for Arts & Crafts.

2008 Qamanittuaq Print Portfolio

The 2008 Qamanittuaq Print Release presents ten new graphics by established and emerging artists. Combining the traditional style of past collections since 1970 with an innovative and refreshing approach, this collection brings work by Daren Itkilik, Thomas Iksiraq, Tony Angualluq, William Noah, William Manirnaluk, Philippa Iksiraq, Matthew Nanauq, Myra Kukiiujaut, Jimmy Kamimmalik, Irene Avaalaaqiaq.

Despite of a fire which destroyed the print shop in 1977 and the entire print collection for the next year and the closure of the workshop in 1990 due to financial difficulties, efforts to revive printmaking in Qamanittuaq in 1996, sponsored by the Nunavut Arctic College, allowed for the release of new print collections.

To see the new print collections, visit these websites :

Kinngait : http://www.dorsetfinearts.com/specialreleases.html

Panniqtuuq : http://www.uqqurmiut.com/pangprints2008mainpage.html

Qamanittuaq : http://www.ccca.ca/inuit/english/qamanittuaq.html

The McMichael Canadian Art Collection d’Art Canadien in Kleinburg (Ontario, Canada) is devoted to collection and exhibiting only Canadian art, including First Nations and Inuit art. The McMichael’s Inuit Art Collection is a major public resource that attracts researchers on Inuit art and culture, committed collectors and art galleries.

The Inuit art collection of the McMichael includes paintings, prints, drawings and sculptures created in the Canadian Arctic, using many different materials and individual styles. The gallery’s permanent collection is supplemented by the long loan of 100 000 drawings, prints and sculptures from the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative Ltd, based in Kinngait (Baffin Island, Nunavut).

A current exhibition is devoted to Inuit art entitled « Kenojuak : From drawing to print », until November 30, 2008. This event examines Kenojuak’s involvement with the Kinngait printing program by comparing a selection of the artist’s drawings to their subsequent prints. Focusing on the collaborative relationship between artist and printmaker, this exhibition contains 11 drawings and 11 prints realized by Kenojuak.

« Kenojuak, like most Inuit graphic artists, relies on the considerable skills of print shop staff to transfer her drawings into prints. At times, changes made to the original drawing compositions are minimal, but during the early 1970s, extensive changes were made, particularly in the use of color and markings. » notes Shana White, Mc Michael’s Assistant Curator who curated the exhibition.

The McMichael proposed recently an exhibition focussed on the early experiment in printmaking launched in the winter of 1957 and on the resultant small series of prints by a dozen artists in 1958. This exhibition was entitled « Saumik : James Houston’s legacy».

The McMichael officially opened in July of 1966, in Kleinburg (Ontario, Canada). Formerly, private collectors built their art collection dedicated to Canadian artists when they started purchasing in 1955 the artworks of Lawren Harris, Tom Thomson, the Group of Seven and their contemporary. Other the years, the collection has continued to grow including First Nations and Inuit art; expending now through purchases and donations from private and corporate art collectors.

www.mcmichael.com

In the Inuit society of past as of the present, tuktuit ” caribous ” (tuktu in the singular) occupy an important place. In the contemporary art, in sculpture as in pictorial art (painting, drawing, print), the caribou is one of the most represented games with the polar bear and the seal.

The caribou remains mostly represented by the male artists. Indeed, men know perfectly well caribous to have carefully observed them for a long time while the hunting. The artists can reproduce their movements, their attitudes or their expressions into carving or graphics so realistically.

The caribou is for example Tim Pitseolak’s favorite theme in Kinngait and also Andrew Qappik’s one in Panngiqtuuq. The animal can be represented lonely or in herd as main topic of the artwork or as game in a hunting scene. The caribou is also often associated with traditional myths.

Formerly, caribous were essential for Inuit as source of food and raw materials for the clothing making, the construction of summer tents in skins, the sled dogs manufacturing and tools in bone and antlers, as well as realization of carvings and amulets.

The Inuit writer Taamusi Qumaq explains in inuktitut: ” The caribou is a walker and a game. He was used formerly enormously by our ancestors and their descendants: the skin was considered as garment, its meat as food, its nerves were threads, its skin was considered as tents by our ancestors. “ (Translation from inuktitut)*.

Today, Inuit still hunt caribous all the parts of which are used: we eat their meat, raw, frozen, dried or boiled; their skin are still used for clothes as mittens and their bones and antlers are carved.

* Reference :
Taamusi Qumaq, 1991, Inuit uqausillaringit. Les véritables mots Inuit / The genuine Inuit words, Québec : Association Inuksiutiit Katimajiit / Inukjuaq et Montréal : Institut Culturel Avataq, p.224.

The sale-exhibition of Inuit prints from the Canadian Arctic, organized within the framework of the International meetings of contemporary print in Val de Loing was inaugurated last May 31st in Souppes-sur- Loing, in Parisian area (France). Eighty-three prints, around thirty sculptures from Kinngait, Panniqtuuq, Puvirnituq and Ulukhaqtuuq, as well as photos and everyday objects are exposed in Souppes-sur-Loing (in the South of Paris) until June 15th, 2008.

More than hundred fifty guests were in the inauguration, among whom of the personalities of the artistic, cultural, political circles. Madam Louise Blais, director of the Canadian Cultural Center in Paris, insisted on the dynamics of the culture Inuit in the Canadian Arctic, while underlining the talent of the Inuit artists and quality of the art works here presented.

Qattaugaq Saila, an Inuk from Kinngait and the famous artist Pitalusi Saila (Pitaloosie Saila)’s daughter, was also present. Student at the Arctic College of Iqaluit (Nunavut) she went to Paris in order to teach inuktitut to the students of the INALCO, Qattaugaq was very touched and proud to see her mother’s and family’s artworks exhibited in France.

For the most part of visitors, that they are art lovers, collectors or simply curious, this exhibition appears as an occasion to discover the nuit culture through the artworks exhibited there. Many people say themselves enchanted and delighted by the artists’ creativity as well as the strength of prints.

The recent prints of the French artist Arne Aullas of Avignon, are also presented. Her work is inspired by her several stays in Puvirnituq between 1985 and 1990, while she worked with the Inuit artists at the local printshop.

Local schools also participated in the project by working on the Inuit culture subject and the children’s realizations are presented on the floor. To mark this event, an inuksuk was built and inaugurated during the inauguration of the exhibition.

Exhibition catalog (contact: art7events@orange.fr) :
Gérard Robin (ed.), 2008, Estamp’Art 77 2008. Art Inuit, texte d’Aurélie Maire, éd. Art Puissance 7 Events, Nemours.

The origin of the living beings is one of the most popular Inuit myths in the Arctic as well in non Inuit territories. It is about the story of Uinigumasuittuq ” the one who did not want to get married “, so called Takannakaaluk ” the Big there below “; more known by Qallunaat as Sedna. The artists often represent her under the shape of a siren. Various versions of the myth exist, according to the Arctic areas. Here is a version of the story told by an elder from Iglulik in Nunavut :

Unigumasuittuq lived with her parents and their dog Siarnaq. She refused all the pretenders. One day however, she bestowed the favours on a seductive visitor. He was their transformed dog who nobody had recognized. He often returned and she became pregnant. The father discovered then the identity of his host and furious, he transported the couple on an island.

As they went hungry, the girl sent several times the dog to look for some meat by her father. The dog used to bring back the food in a bag placed on his back. Then one day, the father was so furious of having puppies for grandchildren that he placed rocks into the bag thus, provoking the dog drowning. On the advice of their mother, puppies tore their grandfather’s kayak when he came himself to bring food to them.

Henceforth without food, Uinigumasuittuq sent its puppies far off to allow them to survive. She made a first group leave southward to the wide on an old sole of boot: they disappeared in the mist and became Qallunaat (White people). She sent another group southward inside lands, provide with bows and with arrows: they became the Amerindians. Then she decided that the last group of puppies would leave less far, in the North but that they should not be seen by Inuit people: those were transformed into Ijirait, invisible beings living on caribous.

After the dispersal of those who were at the origin of the human races, Uinigumasuittuq returned then with her father. She continued to repel the pretenders until the day when arrived a man who wore sealskin clothes and sunglasses. She found him so beautiful that she agreed to marry him. She discovered too late that he was a petrel disguised as human.

So she ran away in a kayak, helped by her father. Discovering their escape but not succeeding in catching up them, the bird provoked a terrible storm. The terrified father threw his daughter to the water and as she caught the edges of the boat, he cut her fingers and burst her eyes with his knife. Every split phalanx was transformed into marine mammal: ringed seals, bearded seals and beluga whales appeared then. The woman disappeared under the water and lived there henceforth.

And so she became for ever Takannaaluk, ” the Big there below “. Deprived of the fingers, she was henceforth incapable to do hair thus, getting tangled. Every time knots formed, marine mammals remained captive as in fishnets there. When it occurred, Inuit got hungry because no more game could be captured. The shaman then had to come down at the bottom of the sea to untangle Takannaaluk’s hair and release marine mammals. Inuit could hunt then again the game.

Source :
Knud Rasmussen, 1929, «Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos», in Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, VII(1), Copenhagen.

But what is an inuksuk*? Characteristics of the Arctic Regions, inuksuit are simply stony piles (inuksugait in inuktitut) which the silhouette sometimes looks like humans… But let us Paaliin Pilip, an Inuit author Inuit from Iqaluit, explain it :

Inuksugait always had a very big utility. They had different meanings. Inuit had at first two wayss of construction. The first one looks like men. They have arms, leg and head. According to the second method, they were built by stony piles.

Those who were only stony piles also had another function in aid of people who did not know the territory. If you get towards an inuksuk, you can see one then another one. If you simply follow them, you can join the camps. [Extracted from Nunavimiutituulitiqsugit uqausignit, translation from inuktitut]

The inuksuk serves thus even today as guide for hunters and the visitors imoving in the tundra and can also indicate an important place such as a site of hunting or fishing, a meat cache, or a sacred ancestral place.

We find inuksuit almost everywhere in the world today; whether it is in front of the Hotel of the Parliament of the city of Quebec (Quebec), to the European Parliament in Strasbourg (France), on the Place of Canada in Guatemala (Guatemala) or in your garden.

The inuksuk represents a symbol of peace between the civilizations in the world today and was chosen as the symbol for the 2010 Olympics Games in Vancouver. It also appears on the Nunavut flag since the creation of the Nunavut Territory in 1999. The inuksuk became one of the strong symbols of circumpolar Inuit people, that is why Inuit sculptors as Pits Koperkualuk or Pia Saila represent them with pleasure.

*An inuksuk in the singular (pronounce : enookshook) ; inuksuit in the plural.

Read :
GRABURN, Nelson, 2004, « Inuksuk : Icon of the Inuit of Nunavut » in Etudes/Inuit/Studies, n◦28, vol.1, pp. 69-82.

Polar bears - nanuit in inuktitut (singular: nanuq) - are omnipresent in the Inuit culture and the daily life, formerly as today. It is not thus surprising that the bear is a subject of preference for artists in all domains such as carving as graphic arts.

Who saw contemporary Inuit carvings immediately represents himself a polar bear… A dancing bear, do you say? The artistic representations of dancing bears actually appeal to Qallunaat, but this subject is widely spread to answer at the request of the market. Bears commonly walk on the ice, swim or hunt seals but they don’t dance….

“Nanunnguaq” say Inuit people to speak about artistic representations of bears: it can be translated by ” miniature copy or replica of a polar bear ” referencing to the reality.

The artists who carve or draw bears make it from their own experience, because they are also hunters. They know bears very well as they have observed them with attention for a long time; that is why they succeed in representing their body and their movements with so much realism and exactness.

The polar bear is not a harmless artistic subject. Considered by Inuit as an object of greed and a prestigious source ; the bear is the animal who looks like most the Inuit people, taking place at the top of the animal hierarchy. As an Inuk, the polar bear is a predator, what implies relations of rivalry and competition: they hunt both the same game and represent a mutual threat.

A marine and ground mammal at the same time, the bear is cunning, powerful and comfortable in the water as on ground. We say that humans imitate the polar bear’s way of hunting. It is not rare to find bears near villages while they look for food and their strength inspires fear and respect. ” When they are starved, polar bears are not afraid. When they are not hungry, they are afraid of the people” wrote Taamusi Qumaq (Sivulitta piusituqangit, 1988).

Consequently, it is not surprising that the polar bear is so present in the cosmology. He appears as one in the main sources of shaman power by taking place between the invisible powers and the Inuit society. So, shamans often used of bone or ivory amulets representing polar bears.

Today, polar bears are one of the most represented subjects by Inuit artists, thus coming within the tradition.

To learn more about polar bears and Inuit, read :
RANDA, Vladimir, 1986, L’ours polaire et les Inuit, Paris : Sélaf.