The Inuit Art Quarterly has been shortlisted for Best Magazine, Literature and Art in the 2017 Canadian Magazine Awards. The nomination, announced March 30, 2017, recognizes excellence in publishing in the arts and literature, including poetry. This is the inaugural year for the Canadian Magazine Awards presented by Magazines Canada. This is also the IAQ’s first nomination for a ‘Best Magazine’ award in its thirty year history.

Kinngait (Cape Dorset) sculptor Kellypalik Qimirpik (1948–2017) passed away earlier this year. An avid carver whose career was marked by important commissions, his sculptures of Arctic animals were exhibited worldwide.

The Inuit Broadcasting Corporation announced in March that significant progress has been made on the Inuit Film and Video Archives, an effort to digitize some 9000 hours of film and other records and make them accessible to the public.

In May 2016, Shuvinai Ashoona was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, joining the ranks of a significant group of Inuit artists who share the RCA distinction, including Helen Kalvak, Jessie Oonark and Kananginak Pootoogook.

Kananginak Pootoogook, RCA (1935–2010) has been named as a participating artist in this year’s Venice Biennale, opening May 13, 2017. The late Kinngait (Cape Dorset) artist is the first Inuit artist to be included in the fair.

Astral Bodies (2016) at the Mercer Union in Toronto, allows viewers to speculate what the otherworldly may hold through the works of five women whose individual practices address real or imagined spaces beyond physical realms.

Iqaluit-born sculptor and installation artist Couzyn van Heuvelen has created something distinctive with Avataq, a project consisting of several handmade foil balloons resembling traditional sealskin floats.

Jimmy Manning remembers Annie Pootoogook. She grew up in Kinngait (Cape Dorset) as part of a highly artistic family which included parents Eegyvudluk and Napachie Pootoogook, and grandmother Pitseolak Ashoona, who she revered.

What, or rather who, is a change maker? This is the central question that lingered for me after visiting Change Makers at the Art Gallery of Mississauga, which featured works by seven Indigenous artists working across North America and Europe. Given the gallery’s newly-implemented mandate to incorporate “diverse Indigenous perspectives within exhibitions and programming,” the answer seems implied but was not fully articulated. Read More

Tanya Lukin Linklater talks to the IAQ about her most recent performance, and the space, the dancers, the musician, the text, the backstory and the moment of performance all have their parts to play.

The IAQ’s favourite auction picks from the fall 2016 art offerings. Here are works that surprised us, delighted us, and left us wishing our budgets were unlimited.

The seal hunt is a delicate subject for Newfoundland and Labradorians. Alethea Arnaquq-Baril’s Angry Inuk takes on anti-sealing narratives to examine what the hunt represents for Canada’s Inuit.

Historica Canada has launched a new Heritage Minute highlighting the groundbreaking career of the late Kinngait artist Kenojuak Ashevak. This Minute is the first to be produced entirely in Inuktitut as well as English and French.

Review of Floe Edge (2016) at the AXENÉO7 Gallery in Gatineau, QC. The packed exhibition hosted works from Tim Pitsiulak, Mona Netser, Nicole Camphaug, Lavinia van Heuvelen, Mathew Nuqingaq and more.

ArtCOP21: a global program of exhibitions, installations and more that emphasize the interrelatedness of climate and culture. Can art communicate the human effects of climate change at a deeper level than facts and figures alone?

Rocks, Stones and Dust brings together work by sixteen artists to reimagine human relationships to rocks, encouraging a reevaluation of our understanding of rocks as stagnant objects.

Manumie’s depiction of human interactions with both the natural and the spiritual worlds melds oral stories with imaginative, often surreal forms that give a sense of the complex interactions of life in the North.