The Inuit Art Quarterly (IAQ), the world’s only magazine focused on Inuit and circumpolar Indigenous arts, has been nominated for three National Magazine Awards (NMAs) for the 2023 awards cycle, announced the National Media Awards Foundation on May 2. The IAQ is nominated in the One of a Kind Storytelling, Best Editorial Package and Cover Grand Prix categories this year, having won Best Magazine: Art, Literary & Culture and the top prize of the night, Magazine Grand Prix, in 2022.
The One of a Kind Storytelling nomination comes for the artist project Tauttuq, which features photography from Katherine Takpannie alongside new poetry by Taqralik Partridge. Tauttuq, meaning “the colour of” or “the appearance of” in the Nunavik dialect of Inuktitut, aims to capture and hold that which is mutable and changing through photography, colour and language. Takpannie’s Amait series (2015–2019) captures coloured smoke bombs blowing across the landscape, which Partridge’s poetry responds to in English and Inuktut.
Katherine Takpannie Tungujuangajuq #1 (2017) and Tungujuangajuq #4 (2020) Digital photographs © the artist
Tauttuq was featured in the Winter 2022 issue Colour: Chromatic North, the cover of which showcases more poetry and photography from these two artists in a detachable lenticular cover that shifts from blue to green smoky photos as it is titled by the viewer. This cover is also nominated inr the Cover Grand Prix category.
The Colour issue appears to have struck a real chord with this year’s NMA judges, who also put the issue up for Best Editorial Package. In addition to the unique cover and beautiful artist project, highlights from the issue include a portfolio on beadwork that examines Inuit-specific colour palettes, a feature on the kaleidoscopic reality of life in the North, written by asinnajaq, and the story of a Talurjuaq, NU, dye experiment that brought tundra plants to the runways, told by Jocelyn Piirainen.
This is the IAQ’s fifth time being nominated in the category of Best Editorial Package: in 2021 three of the IAQ’s issues, Painting, Relations and Threads, were nominated, and in 2018 Anniversary: Celebrating 30 Years was also nominated. Is it also the second time the IAQ has been recognized for the One of a Kind Storytelling category: in 2018 the sprawling, multi-authored portfolio “30 Artists to Know” was nominated.
Winners for the 2023 National Magazine Awards will be announced at an awards gala on June 2.
Thank you to our loyal community of readers and donors for your support of Inuit art as well as our funders; Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs, the Canada Council for Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and Ontario Creates who make the IAQ possible.
On behalf of the IAQ team, the Inuit Art Foundation staff and board of directors, we would like to acknowledge and congratulate all the writers and artists who contributed to our 2022 issues Break Up (Spring), Unikkaat/Unikkaaqtuat (Summer), Mass (Fall), Colour (Winter) and our special issue Welcome to Quamajuq for sharing your enthusiasm, passion and creativity in our pages. You inspire us everyday.
Qujanamiik, nakurmiik, nakurmeq, quana, merci, thank you!