Gabriel Nuraki Koperqualuk

Gabriel Nuraki Koperqualuk is an emerging filmmaker and artist living in Montreal, QC. Growing up in Montreal as an urban Inuk has greatly influenced his work and his subject matter on Inuit heritage and reconnection. Cultivating a lifelong interest in drawing and abstract art, Koperqualuk studied graphic design which led to his artistic focus on using technology to manipulate art [1]. Creating art and film helps Koperqualuk reconnect with his heritage [2].

In 2018, Koperqualuk co-wrote and directed his first documentary film, The 5^th Region. This film explores the struggles of what it means to be an urban Inuk living in the South by following two subjects as they go about their daily lives and reflect on their identities. Koperqualuk also creates what he terms “glitch art”, where he manipulates the pixels of photos and art to create new, colourful abstractions of the original image [3]. In New Age (n.d.), Koperqualuk has digitally manipulated an image from the Avataq Cultural Institute’s collection of a woman posing in her caribou parka, who is now behind a curtain of black and white lines with shades of purple and blue embedded in the image’s pixels. This is one method Koperqualuk uses to blend modern and traditional ideas. To Koperqualuk, this piece reminds him of space yet also being caged and surrounded [4].

Koperqualuk graduated from the Commercial Photography program at Dawson College and received film training through Video Paradiso [5]. His documentary film The 5^th Region (2018) made its world debut at the 2018 imagineNATIVE festival in Toronto, ON.