Sources of Inspiration in Inuit Art
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.
