In spite of the effects of the christianization, the tradition connected to the shamanism (angakkuuniq in inuktitut) continues, but with adjustments. If Inuit are today Anglican, Catholic or Pentecostal, many people always believe in shamanism: “we believe in these two systems” say the elders in the Canadian Arctic.

Animals and Humans

Formerly, animals constituted an essential source of food, fuel and clothes. It is not thus surprising that the Inuit cosmology insists on the mutual nature of the relations between human and animal. We said that animals gave themselves up to the hunters who pleased them…

Animals and humans own both a spiritual entity (tarniq), but animals serve as food to humans and have no name (atiq) : that differentiates them. Only dogs have a particular status, because they possess a name and share the spirit (inua) of their owner.

Silajjuaq, “the Universe”

Inuit societies are traditionally animistic, like most of the First Nations’cultures. According to the Inuit thought, the universe (silajjuaq) is occupied by human beings (humans, animals, vegetables), deceaseds and spirits (tuurnngait) each who live in different but inter-penetrating worlds. Every human being is provided with an anirniq “breathing, breath of life ” which, when the subject dies integrates a new animal or human body. The conception of the Inuit world represents a continuum, where every element is a part of a whole.

Rachel Attituq Qitsualik, Inuit writer explains: “The Inuit cosmos is ruled by no one. There are no divine mother and father figures. There are no wind gods and solar creators. There are no eternal punishments in the hereafter, as there are no punishments for children or adults in the here and now.”

Shamanism

The shaman serves as intermediary between these various worlds and maintains the balance. He can be helped by protector auxiliary spirits - tuurnngait - to realize this task; they get to the shaman strength and power. ” Yes, obviously there is still shamans. There will be till the end of time.” answered an elder interviewed by young people in the Nunavut Arctic College in Iqaluit.

It is when the shaman travels from a world to the other one, thus entering communication with the deceased’s or spirits’ world as he can change its appearance and be human and animal at the same time… This is what we called the shaman’s transformation. This topic is frequently represented in the contemporary art, in carving with Tukiki Mannomee, Alasua Sharky as in graphic arts with Simon Tookoomee and Noah Maniapik for examples.

http://www.tradition-orale.ca/english/cosmology-and-shamanism-b24.html

From 21st June to 1st July, 2008, Iqaluit will host the Alianait ! Arts Festival. This annual event organised in Nunavut’s capital city is devoted to Inuit arts and consists in ten days and nights of art, music, film, storytelling, circus arts, dance, theatre and much more.

Alianait is the expression of joy and celebration in Inuktitut (inuit language); it means « be delighted ! ». This event indeed celebrates the return of summer and midnight sun (24 hour daylight)… The theme of Alianait 2008 is String Games, an Inuit traditional practice – ajarait in Inuktitut.

Alianait Arts Festival will showcase traditional arts and artists from across the Canadian Arctic and the circumpolar world, including famous carvers. Workshops will be organized during the artists will demonstrate their artistic practices such as granite, caribou antler or ivory carving, printmaking, drawing, painting… They could also exhibit and sale their artworks.

«The objective is to expose both local audience and local professional performers and emerging artists to a diversity of professionals that they can learn from and grow professionally. Festival organizers also plan to assist Nunavut in presenting itself as a tourist destination and to also help the professional development of Iqaluit and Nunavut artists and performers.» is mentioned on the Alianait’s website.

The Festival will be presented by the Nunavut Arts & Crafts Association, L’Association Francophones des Nunavut, Qaggiq Theatre Company, the Iqaluit Music Society, Ajjiit Nunavut Media Association, Part-Time Players, the Office of the Language Commissioner and the City of Iqaluit. Alianait 2008 marks its fourth year hosted in Iqaluit.

The Alianait ! Arts Festival. This Festival increases each year thus, being more diverse and bigger.

http://www.alianait.ca/

Artistic diversity

The contemporary Inuit artistic production in the Arctic is extremely rich and varied considering the used practices and techniques as individual and local styles.

Each artist works according to his/her own individual and family experience which inspires its creations. The iconographic subjects, the styles and the way of representations which result from it determine the dynamics of the artistic productions.

Domains of creation

Carving constitutes about 80% of Inuit art production and is considered as the major art form in most communities and the one with which Inuit art is most readily associated.

The rest of the production corresponds to other artistic domains such as print, drawing, painting; also adding in it the craft productions like pottery, tapestry and sewing.

The notion of « art »

The notion of «art» such as defined by Qallunaat (non Inuit) does not exist for Inuit because this notion is too much abstracted; so the word “art” does not thus exist in inuktitut (the Inuit language). Indeed, inuktitut is an extremely precise language and every element of the word or the sentence has a specific meaning.

Sanannguagaq indicates for example the carving; but its meaning corresponds more exactly at the idea of «making something in miniature, small-scale»; thus, the representation resulting from it is a small size replica of the reality.

Inuit art market

The Inuit artistic creations are intended mainly for Qallunaat according to two kinds of market: the international art market and the tourist market, mainly in North America and Europe.

Today, the contemporary Inuit art is present on an international scale through art galleries, museums and private collections. The artworks contribute to diffuse the image of an Inuit culture anchored in its traditions and resolutely turned to the future.

The Tupilaq (tupilait in the plural) is a strong identity symbol of the Greenlander Inuit today as the Inuksuk is the one the Canadian Inuit. Even if they are both spread on an international scale on the art market and the tourist sphere, Tupilaq as Inuksuk draw their origin from ancestral historic past.

In Kalaalisut (the Inuit language in Greenland), the word « tupilaq » means a « spirit » or an «ancestor’s soul» and made previously reference to a sinister spirit power. In the past, Tupilait were indeed used as a tools of revenge against enemies.

Each Tupilaq was created by a shaman who combined several parts from human and animals (like bones, caribou antlers, skin or hair) to make a sort of small figurine with a scaring appearance, half human and half animal.

This created object was then celebrated by a chamanic powerful song over it thus, receiving the spirit requested by the shaman. As becoming alive into the human world, the Tupilaq was then put out to sea or into the victim’s qajaq (kayak) to let it realize its task (kill the ennemy).

However, it was not without risk because if the victim had greater shamanic powers than its attacker (if the victim had not any shamanic power himself/herself, he/she could be helped by somebody else who had some), he/she could repel its attack and instead send the Tupilaq back to kill its creator.

The island of Kulusuk in the Ammassalik area (East Greenland) is a famous place where Tupilait are created today. They are currently made from ivory, whales bones or caribou antlers.

But don’t be afraid ! Today’s Tupilait are harmless ; they exercise their powers only on the artists’ creativity and the art collectors’imagination….

The Espace Culturel Inuit (The Inuit Cultural Space) inaugurated on March 28th its new Parisian sub-branch at the Canadian Cultural Center (5 rue de Constantine, 75007 Paris). ” A large number of our partners wished to celebrate this event with us ! “, notices enthusiastically one of the person in charge of The Espace Culturel Inuit.

Lisa Koperqualuk, an Inuit collaborator from Nunavik, was invited on this occasion during she proposed a round-table, thus splendidly explaining the importance of the economic development for Inuit in front of guests’ hundred, among whom personalities from political, cultural, artistic, scientific and university circles.

The Espace Culturel Inuit defines itself as a place of exhibition, information and documentation, opened to the public and dedicated to the promotion of the Inuit culture in France and in Europe. For example, the responsible for The Espace currently intervene in secondary schools on the notions of culture and identity through the discovery of the Inuit culture and of those of the students within the framework of the project ” Passeport Discouverte Année Polaire “. They also work on the event ” Rendez-Vous Polaires – en terres Inuit ” organized around an Inuit prints exhibition planned on June 2008 (see article of March 26th).

The Prime Minister of Nunavut Paul Okalik visited the new premises of the Espace Culturel Inuit few days later its opening and said himself “delighted that The Inuit Cultural Space found a new roof “. Previously localized in the 19th arrondissement, The Espace had recently had to close its doors due to the lack of financial resources. Let us remember that the creation of The Espace Culturel Inuit results from the initiative of the non-profit Association Inuksuk. Created in 1995, Inuksuk counts members’ hundred today and is managed by about fifteen of graduates in Inuit culture and language at the INALCO.

The persons in charge of The Espace Culturel Inuit lean their competences both on the association of their multidisciplinary and international university training and on their recent experiences accross the Inuit territories. But the dynamics of their actions results especially from the will to share their common passion for the Inuit culture and the Arctic.

Do not hesitate to visit The Espace Culturel Inuit in Paris, premises or web site depending where you are : you will be warmly received there !

As an active member of the Inuksuk Association, I invite you to visit us. Tungasugitsi! Be very welcome!

Go ahead (opened from Tuesday to Friday : 14h-18h) :
Espace Culturel Inuit, in Centre Culturel Canadien
5 rue de Constantine
75 007 Paris, France.
Métro Invalides
www.espace.inuit.free.fr

Kenojuak Ashevak, well-known Inuit artist from Kinngait (Cape Dorset) in Nunavut received on Friday, March 28 in Ottawa The Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts, Canada’s foremost distinctions for excellence in these artistic disciplines, were created in 1999 by the Governor General of Canada and the Canada Council for the Arts.

” I just take these things out of my thoughts, and out of my imagination, and… not try to show what anything looks like in the material world… It’s more an interplay of form and colour. ” Kenojuak explains about her art.

She is probably the best known and most acclaimed of all the Inuit artists who have emerged in the North in the last half century. Her own story is as remarkable as the story of Kinngait and its printmakers and sculptors. Many of Kenojuak Ashevak’s drawings, prints and sculptures have become icons, etched into the public consciousness.

Her bold shapes, bright colours and fantastical creatures have endured for some 50 years, reflecting a unique vision and a special relationship to the land. Born in 1927 in Ikerrasak, a campsite on southern Baffin Island, she lived a traditional nomadic life on the land before settling her family in Kinngait where she still lives.

Kenojuak Ashevak was featured in a National Film Board production, Eskimo Artist – Kenojuak, and her graphic images have been used on Canadian stamps. She is a Companion of the Order of Canada, a member of the Royal Canadian Academy and the recipient of two honorary doctorates. Her sculpture, drawings and prints are found in all major Canadian collections as well as international museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The National Gallery of Canada, in collaboration with the Canada Council for the Arts, presents an exhibition devoted to the eight winners of the 2008 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts : Kenojuak Ashevak, Serge Giguère, Chantal Gilbert, Michel Goulet, Alex Janvier, Tanya Mars, Eric Metcalfe And Dr. Shirley Thomson. Representing the practices of some of Canada’s leading artists working in painting, performance, video, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, fine craft and film, the exhibition showcases a selection of some 25 works.

An important Inuit print sale exhibition will take place in France in the Parisian area in Souppes sur Loing, from May 31th to June 15ft 2008. This untitled event « The Polar meetings – in the Inuit land » gathers about 85 prints created by 41 artists from Nunavut, Nunavik and Northwest Territories in Canadian Arctic.

In order to share the Inuit point of view from several Arctic communities, numerous famous artists will take part in the show like Kenojuak Ashevak, Kananginak Pootoogook and Meelia Kelly from Kinngait; Andrew Qappik, Jolly Atagoojuk and Abigail Uutuuva from Panniqtuuq; Johnny Amituk, Josie Sivuaraapik and Josie Papialuk from Puvirnituq ; Angès Nanogak and Mary Okheena from Ulukhaqtuuq (Holman).

This major event, a first in Europe, is in line with the International Polar Year and will involve other fields such as scientific research, conferences, music, cinema, photography and educational activities. Its aim consists in promoting and documenting contemporary Inuit art as well as Inuit culture. These domains are not really known in France or in Europe although lots of people are interested in non Western art (see for examples in Paris the Musée du Quai Branly opened in 2006, the National Museum of Asian Art also called the Musée Guimet or the Musée Dapper Foundation dedicated to African art).

This project is undertaken by a non profit association Art Puissance 7 Events focused on the contemporary print creation and the promotion of artworks and artists in France. In order to organize this Inuit print sale exhibition, Art Puissance 7 events joined Inuksuk Espace Culturel Inuit in Paris another non profit association which was created in 1995 and managed since 1999 by a group of students from the Inalco in Paris (the only university in the world where you can learn Inuktitut, the Inuit language). The Inuksuk’s members aim to bring Inuit culture to French and European audiences through exhibitions, scientific as public conferences and scholar activities.

Several Canadian and French partnerships have been engaged in order to realize the project like the Dorset Fine Art of Toronto, the Avataq Cultural Institute, the Fédération des Coopératives du Nouveau-Québec, the Iglou Art Esquimau (French art gallery in Douai). This project also benefits by collaborations engaged with the Arctic print shop: the Uqqurmiut Centre for Art and Crafts in Panniqtuuq and the Dorset Fine Art in Kinngait.

We wish the event success; all the more the benefits of the print sale will be redistributed to the print shops and their artists in Inuit territories.

More details :
www.art7events.org
www.espace.inuit.free.fr

Located on the eastern shore of Ungava Bay in Nunavik (northern Quebec), Kangiqsualujjuaq (formerly George River) began specializing in caribou antler sculptures since the 1970’s. « What we show in our carvings is the life we have lived in the past right up today. We show the truth. » say Inuit artists. Kangiqsualujjuaq means in inuktitut (Inuit language) «very large bay»; about 750 people (2006) live in this Inuit community.

The importance of depicting the reality of daily Inuit existence, as well as events described in Inuit oral history, mythology and personal recollection, is a current that has run through fifty years of Nunavik sculpture. Artworks from Kangiqsualujjuaq have sometimes a tendency toward distortion and expressionism in human and spirit faces and bodies inspired by shamanism and spirits’ transformation scenes.

Although the international art market values the achievement of “classic” 1950s Nunavik art, it very much encourages and rewards innovation today. Inuit have been making antler sculptures for centuries related to shamanism and nomadic way of life. Thus moving from winter camp to summer camp, traditional ivory carvings and antler sculptures were on small size. But the size of artworks significantly increased, both linked to the development of the Inuit art market on an international scale as well as the arctic communities’ establishment and forced sedentarization.

Antler is commonly utilized material: Inuit hunt caribous to eat their meet, to wear their skin, to change their antler into tools and sculptures etc…; caribou shed their antlers each year.

Inuit artists often combine antlers with stone, whalebone or ivory. Caribou antlers (like ivory) are usually worked with smaller flexible-shaft grinders, saws, small diamond files, and sharp knives. Antler sculpture is also practiced in Nunavut and on a pan-Inuit scale, like Greenlandic Tupilaq.

For more information about the community and its artists, see this web site :
www.nvkangiqsualujjuaq.ca

The immediate environment and individual experiences as well as collective (related to the history of families and arctic communities) are the main sources of artistic inspiration, including themes represented from shamanism and imagination.

Since its beginning in the 1950’s, contemporary Inuit art intends for the international art market - North America and Europe in particular – actually for Qallunaat, “white people”. Developed at first in commercial purposes, the artistic creation in Nunavut and Nunavik exceeds nevertheless this single aim: contemporary art assigns to Inuit people a new identity linked to the subjects represented in artworks. Inuit artists are unanimous when they talk about their artistic practices: “the importance of the issue takes precedence over everything else”. The artist’s intent added to the final meaning determine significantly the choice of topics; artworks thus becoming a narrative aid.

The hunting activity is a key component of Inuit culture and is naturally a favourite artistic theme all the more carvers are predominantly male - then hunters – as well as drawers and print-makers in early 1960. Let us remember that when the artists don’t work, they go hunting most of the time according to the weather. Really important in Inuit society, the hunting game is also present as iconographic subject on different forms. Indeed, marine mammals and terrestrial often appear alone or in a group, chased by human or animal predators, as well as actors of myths or related to shamanism. Polar bear, caribou, seal, walrus, narwhal, and beluga whale, but also fishes and birds (snow owls, crows and loons) correspond to the most popular animal themes in Inuit art. The daily life is also a major topic even more important in graphic art (drawings and prints) than in carving. Despite the major place taken by hunting scenes in Inuit art, the illustration of women’s activities - like mother and child, food sharing, preparation of skins - raises in conjunction with the increasing feminization of graphic artists.

Today, Inuit artists draw inspiration at the same time from the past and present that means their artistic imagery both refers to the nomadic lifestyle and the actual sedentary way of life. Inuit subjects represented by contemporary artists contribute to the transmission and the recovery of traditional knowledge, whose process of Christianization engaged since the late nineteenth century and the forced schooling while the mid twentieth has deprived them. Foreign to the notion of “l’art pour l’art”, Inuit artworks like drawings, prints, paintings, carvings, tapestries as pottery work as narrations. If the history of art (descended from a Western tradition) pains to accord some attention to the artist’s discourses, Inuit artworks can not be separated from orality; even since Inuit culture comes from an oral tradition still relevant today that is based on collective and individual experiences.

Inuit art became explicit outside the Inuit territories through its iconographic richness as the dynamism of artistic creation. Inuit artists play today an important role in the contemporary society: their strong involvement in cultural domain provides them with a new status locally and internationally as spokespersons of a culture that is changing and being open to the outside world while still being anchored in its ancient traditions.

To learn more :

Ingo HESSEL, Inuit Art : An Introduction, Vancouver/Toronto : Douglas & McIntyre, 1998.

The aim of this blog consists in examining and documenting Inuit artistic creation on a pan-Inuit scale close to past and contemporary Inuit culture in Alaska, Greenland, Nunavut and Nunavik (Canadian Eastern Arctic).

Our interest focuses on works of art, creators and artistic events like exhibition and cultural projects devoted to Inuit art and more largely to First Nations art on an international perspective. This blog also aims at sharing knowledge acquired in situ among artistic actors of local sphere in order to engage a reflexion about Inuit art and culture.

Whereas the diffusion of Inuit art on the international art scene, Inuit culture still suffers of numerous preconceived ideas. Let us remember that before they managed to have a voice on the political scene, the Inuit had previously acquired recognition thanks to the diffusion of their art in Western countries.

The first sale exhibition of contemporary Inuit art took place in 1949 in Montreal. Ever since it acquired in 1953 the double status of work of art and national Canadian art when the Queen is given, as a diplomatic present from the federal government, an Inuit contemporary carving, Inuit works of art are present on national and international scale through museums, galleries and private collections.

Artistic creation constitutes an essential component in the elaboration of Inuit contemporary discourse on identity. The strong involvement of artists in cultural domain provides them with a new status locally and internationally as spokespersons of a culture that is changing while being anchored in its ancient traditions and being still open to the outside world.