Content note: This article contains a word used historically to refer to Inuit that may be considered derogatory today.
The nights are growing longer, but they have also become more colourful with fun and scary decorations appearing in many neighbourhoods. To celebrate spooky season, our staff reflect on artworks that have bewitched them, depicting haunting sights like skeletal figures and Gothic castles. Enjoy the Halloween season alongside us with these five works by circumpolar Indigenous artists.
Padloo Samayualie Untitled (Skeletons) (2022) Coloured pencil and ink 49.5 x 32.4 cm
COURTESY MADRONA GALLERY © THE ARTIST
Untitled (Skeletons) (2022)
The seemingly floating skeletons against the muted orange background in Untitled (Skeletons) by multidisciplinary artist Padloo Samayualie create a sense of hazy spookiness. The meticulous details in the figures Samayualie has drawn—cavernous eyes, gaping mouths, spindly bones—are common across her works, and here they contrast with the overall feeling of otherworldliness; these skeletons feel very tangible but at the same time like they’re part of a haunting dream. The texture of their clothing adds to the sense of realness; I imagine reaching out and touching the coarse tweed-like fabric with my fingertips.
With the skeletons dressed up in surprisingly formal attire, I wonder what they are up to. Are they here as scary uninvited visitors, here trick-or-treating or on their way to a party?
MELISSA KAWAGUCHI
Associate Editor
Eli Sallualuk Qinuajua Curious Creature (n.d.) Stone 5.1 x 7.6 x 4.4 cm
COURTESY FIRST ARTS © THE ARTIST
Curious Creature (n.d.)
Curious Creature, a tiny sculpture by artist Eli Sallualuk Qinuajua (1937–2004), exudes an unsettling energy. It’s spooky yet somehow cute and gives me not only the creepy crawlies but also the desire to...pet it? Its eyeball rests on the ground, weighing down its eye stalk. It seems to look curiously at me as I stare, unnerved, back at a creature that straddles the categories of animal, monster, bug and alien. What exactly am I looking at?
In a 1985 interview Qinuajua said, “What I do best is carvings of things that come from inside my head and which are difficult to understand,” [1] so perhaps unsettling the viewer was his goal when sculpting his eerie works. I’m just grateful he continued exploring these spooky subjects for his entire career.
EMILY LAWRENCE
Associate Editor
Napachie Pootoogook Eskimo Mother and Children Frightened by Demons (1961) Stonecut 47.6 x 69.9 cm
COURTESY WADDINGTON’S AUCTIONEERS AND APPRAISERS, TORONTO © THE ARTIST
Eskimo Mother and Children Frightened by Demons (1961)
Looking at this print by Napachie Pootoogook (1938–2002), I can’t decide whether I should be afraid or amused.
Hear me out—initially I thought the vibrant blue circular object was a drum, like ones I've seen depicted in other Inuit artworks being used to summon helping spirits. With rounded, childlike eyes and slightly smiling mouths, these demons appear almost friendly. Standing on their iglu, the family is encircled by demons, but who can say whether the otherworldly figures mean to entrap the family or wrap them in a protective embrace?
Since early Inuit works were often titled by someone other than the artist, [2] perhaps there is a more complicated story than the title implies. It’s a bit like the subjective nature of fright itself, triggered by something different for us all.
JESSICA MACDONALD
Associate Editor and Editorial Supervisor
Kablusiak Duck Lake Street (2018) Archival pigment print 81.3 x 121.9 cm
COURTESY NORBERG HALL © THE ARTIST
Duck Lake Street (2018)
Feelings of estrangement and isolation manifest in the classic ghost costume—a white bedsheet with two holes cut out for eyes—within Kablusiak’s akunnirun kuupak series of photographs taken in Inuuvik, Inuvialuit Settlement Region, NT. Ghosts are inherently liminal figures—caught between this world and the next—and this condition is foregrounded by the landscape of Duck Lake Street. Weeds, brush and scraggly trees sprout through gravel and wires, radiating from a telephone pole and criss-crossing the sky. Meanwhile, the ghostly figure’s arms run parallel to the utilidor, or utility corridor, behind them.
The setting is ambiguous—possibly an empty lot, the side of the road or a corner of someone’s property—and this ghost expresses the tension between place and self; caught between the familiar and the foreign, it leaves viewers wondering where they belong.
MICHELLE SONES
Fact Checker
Martin Brandt Hansen Kabinet 3905.6 / Grown Not Made (2022) (installation view) Sealskin; Heinz ketchup bottles; a mask made of rubber, metal and plastic; a plastic castle and a Prince cigarette package Dimensions variable
COURTESY ANDERSEN’S CONTEMPORARY PHOTO MALLE MADSEN © THE ARTIST
Kabinet 3905.6 / Grown Not Made (2022)
In Kabinet 3905.6 / Grown Not Made, Kalaaleq visual artist Martin Brandt Hansen presents a playful yet haunting scene, conjuring a surreal meditation on cultural commodification. A cut-up sealskin, calling to mind tupilait sculptures, [3] hovers like an apparition over ketchup bottles—comical spectres of global commerce. A mask crafted from contemporary materials stands as a revenant near a Gothic toy castle, their eerie contrast blurring the lines between authenticity and invention. Below, a Prince cigarette pack delivers a wry punchline about the spectral presence of Danish imports in Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland).
The piece is encased in plexiglass, the barrier acting as a microcosmic membrane, bridging outsider perceptions of Kalaallit Nunaat with internal realities of Kalaallit experiences, where colonialism's lingering spirits are reframed with absurdist humour. Hansen’s piece becomes a playful séance, blending gravity and whimsy.
CHARISSA VON HARRINGA
Arctic Arts Summit Platform Managing Editor
Notes
[1] Quoted in Amy Adams, “Surrealism and Sulijuk: Fantastic Carvings of Povungnituk and European Surrealism,” Inuit Art Quarterly, Winter 1994: 10.
[2] For more on how Inuit artworks were titled, see: Heather Igloliorte and Taqralik Partridge, “Making Room for Inuit Curators to Thrive,” Inuit Art Quarterly, Summer 2024: 54.
[3] For more perspectives on tupilak, see: Laila Lund Altinbas, “Anne-Birthe Hove,” Inuit Art Quarterly, Spring 2019: 20.