Art is a wonderful teaching medium, especially for visual learners. Learning in Inuit cultures is traditionally passed on by observing and mimicking Elders, highlighting the importance of visual skill acquisition. It’s even codified in the Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit value of Pilimmaksarniq, the development of skills through practice, effort and action. So it should be no surprise that this didactic approach is also prevalent in Inuit art.
Last year I was a guest speaker at an art history class. I selected some of my own artworks to present on screen while I spoke about myself, my artistic journey and the inspiration behind my work. My print Tiiturumaviit? (2023), which features six colourful tea mugs, was on screen above me when the lecturer asked why I use mundane objects in my artwork. What is the significance of those particular objects?
I thought “mundane” was a strange way to describe continuous resistance and cultural sovereignty amid the suffocating trajectory of colonialism. I made Tiiturumaviit? because it reminds me of hunting and drinking tea on the land with my dad and grandma near Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake), NU; I made the original image while teaching art as therapy at Mamisarvik, an Inuit-only addictions healing facility in Ottawa, ON, where we spent time drinking tea together, just like I’d done with my family so many times. After over a century of colonization and attempts to destroy Indigeneity, my existence is resistance, and those tea mugs tell that story. They are recognizable to other Inuit, there to show us that our way of life endures. Small, shared moments of being together and within our own culture carry so much meaning.
Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona Tiiturumaviit? (2023) Linocut 61 × 91.4 cm © THE ARTIST
Similarly, it’s why didactic artworks—those meant to teach and inform—are important: with them we can learn from, live in and carry on Inuit-specific mindsets and skills ourselves. By depicting sustainable activities like harvesting, sewing and self-reliance, the artworks in this can teach future generations much larger concepts like anti-capitalism, cultural sovereignty and the continuation of our Inuit lifestyles in the past, present and future.
The title of Marion Tuu’luq’s, RCA, LLD, (1910–2002) nivingajuliat Dismembered/Remembered (1980) is spot on and sounds like a very short poem. She has sectioned the artwork into four quadrants. The bottom two contain animals and pieces of them: birds and their wings and feet beside fish, bears and seal parts. In the top left there are animal pieces as well, but more dismembered than the other two depictions, featuring caribou heads, antlers and bones. The pieces of animals in these three sections show how we butcher and use every bit of them. Meanwhile in the top right quadrant, Tuu’luq shows these animals’ usefulness to us by depicting what the dismembered animals become: parkas, amautiit, fur pants, kamiit, pualuuk and a tupiq. The clothing is spread out on the ground like the garments have been taken out to dry in the sun, another small lesson left for the viewer: keep your wardrobe fresh!
Tuu’luq’s sewing of the duffle animals and clothing items mirrors the sewing it would take to create these garments out of fur and skin. I’m sure the artist was able to ruminate on days spent hunting and fishing, catching these delicious animals, and the time spent creating clothes for her family.
Marion Tuu’luq Dismembered/Remembered (1980) Embroidered duffle, felt and thread 69.6 × 75.7 cm COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA MUSEUMS ART COLLECTION © THE ARTIST
Many settlers are horrified by butchered animals, but I think this piece conveys the reverence that Inuit show toward what we hunt: Tuu’luq remembers and honours the warmth, food and shelter that animals provide for Inuit by sewing their likenesses into the nivingajuliat. The work perfectly exemplifies Inuit worldviews: the feeling of connection to the land and its bounty, using every part of the animal and tapping into the sensation of creation.
Kananginak Pootoogook’s, RCA, (1935–2010) 1987 lithograph Making Sealskin Kamiks is special because, in content and presentation, it bridges time between the old days and more contemporary culture. A woman sits on the floor threading a needle, sewing a kamik in her lap. Around her lies a finished kamik, mittens with liners, a four-braided tie, ulu, sharpener, thimble, scissors, fur offcuts and embroidered kamikpaak, or duffle sock liners.
Kamiit are made the same as they always have been, but her clothing is indicative of the time the print was made: she wears a traditional amauti, but it is made of fabric rather than skins and paired with a knee-length floral skirt, which was fashionable in the 1980s. Nowadays arnait usually wear jeans or insulated pants with their amautiit.
When Inuit predominantly lived on the land, there was a superstition that any image drawn on the iglu window or snow would come to life and haunt the person. So folks didn’t draw much, and when co-ops started providing drawing materials and encouraging people to draw, Inuit most commonly drew flat scenes without foreground or background. Most early drawings and prints were done the way we made clothing patterns: with the image in our mind, precisely, in one singular motion with sure lines—think of famous early works from Luke Anguhadluq (1895–1982); Jessie Oonark, OC, RCA, (1906–1985); or Kenojuak Ashevak, CC, ONu, RCA, (1927–2013).
Kananginak Pootoogook Making Sealskin Kamiks (1987) Printmaker Pitseolak Niviaqsi Lithograph 52.1 × 64.8 cm COURTESY WAG-QAUMAJUQ PHOTO LIANED MARCOLETA © THE ARTIST
Here the woman and the items on the ground beneath her are rendered in three-quarter perspective, while behind her—in what should be the background—are flat schematics of dried sealskins with kamik pattern pieces cut out of them. The pieced black and grey sealskins show future sewers where the pieces should be placed to achieve the correct fur direction and colouring. The bleached white sealskin is shown whole—the two holes in it represent only where the front flippers are removed when skinning the seal.
I love how Pootoogook combined these two types of representation and perspective, mixing the content of the image with the style it’s drawn in. Pootoogook shows evidence of the continuation of Inuit culture through time, using traditional and modern tools to achieve a traditional objective: care and warmth.
Martha Noah’s Fish in Weir (1993) has the perfect composition. The subject, the weir, takes up the whole of the dark river background, and each fish is lovingly placed to fill the void left by the circular shape, perfectly taking up all usable space on the duffle. Using space to its full potential strokes something in my brain the right way, and it must stem from cutting clothing patterns out of hides. Keep in mind, hours of work had already gone into catching, skinning, fleshing, drying and sketching before it was time to cut pieces, so cutting skins is high stakes. This is where the surety, decisiveness and confidence to create accurate lines come in. I doubt Noah needed a pattern or template, simply cutting out the rocks and fish she saw in her mind’s eye.
Martha Noah Fish in Weir (1993) Wool duffle, wool felt and embroidery floss 60 × 85 cm COURTESY WAG-QAUMAJUQ PHOTO ERNEST MAYER © THE ARTIST
Her nivingajuliat features colourful rocks shown from over head, a draftsman’s blueprint for how to construct a fishing weir. The fish caught inside are depicted from the side: the mixing of perspectives that, again, I love Inuit art for.
Fishing weirs are constructed in rivers when the fish are running. In the early summer, fish swim upstream to spawn and downstream later in the year. The circular shape is made to corral them into a condensed area. Since their instincts tell them to swim in only one direction depending on the time of year, the fish won’t swim back out of the open end of the weir. They are then speared by a group of Inuit with kakivat, thrown ashore, cleaned, dried and cached. In the subsistence days, the whole family or group would take part in the activity. Fish were plentiful during the run and everyone helped prepare for the upcoming winter.
So while this might seem to some an uncomplicated and cheerfully coloured artwork, here Noah demonstrates her confidence in creation and inherent artistry and gives a blueprint for weir construction: instructions for the next generations of fishing enthusiasts.
The epitome of didacticism: Jessie Oonark’s, OC, RCA, (1906–1985) Cutout pieces for an amautiq, hood and socks (schematic clothing patterns) (1978). Not only is this piece visually stunning and highlights Oonark’s love for symmetry, the artist has created something that could literally be enlarged and cut out to use as a clothing pattern.
Jessie Oonark Cutout pieces for an amautiq, hood and socks (schematic clothing patterns) (1978) Coloured pencil 38.1 × 56.4 cm COURTESY MACDONALD STEWART ART CENTRE COLLECTION AT THE ART GALLERY OF GUELPH © THE ARTIST
Although not all pattern pieces are included, the amauti pieces illustrated here are the style shown in many of Oonark’s artworks, like Woman (1970), with the middle piece showing the fringed akuq shape. Fringe along the bottom edge of a parka or amauti is added to protect the wearer from cutting winds while still allowing leg movement. The long pieces at the top on the outer edges are for the side of the long hood that is signature to my region, Qamani’tuaq.
One of the amazing things about working in Inuit art is the impetus to learn things about my own culture and to increase my language skills in the process. I knew most of the amauti shapes, and the sock patterns on the bottom edges are pretty self-explanatory, but I wasn’t sure what the circular piece with what looks like a handle in the middle is called or what it is for. So I messaged my sister and learned that the mystery piece is called a makkaq and it is the underside of the baby pouch. How cool to learn while in the midst of writing an article about the teachings of art, reinforcing the value that didactic artworks like this carry. I’m so grateful to Oonark, my amauq, my great-grandmother, for immortalizing her seamstress skills for future generations like me!
Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona is an Inuit multidisciplinary artist and writer based in Ottawa, ON. Her work includes knitting and ceramics, prints and major visual art commissions, incorporating everyday objects that have symbolic meanings for Inuit, which she reframes through a modern lens. In 2023 Kabloona was shortlisted for the Kenojuak Ashevak Memorial Award.
This Feature was originally published in the Fall 2024 issue of the Inuit Art Quarterly.