Ilisarniq Workshop: Inuit Art and the Archives

asinnajaq, also known as Isabella Rose Weetaluktuk, is a visual artist, filmmaker, writer and curator based in Montreal, QC. asinnajaq's practice is grounded in research and collaboration, which includes working with other artists, friends and family. In 2016 she worked with the National Film Board of Canada's archive to source historical and contemporary Inuit films and colonial representations of Inuit in film. The footage she pulled is included in her short film "Three Thousand." The film was nominated for Best Short Documentary at the 2018 Canadian Screen Awards by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television. asinnajaq was a part of the curatorial team for the Canadian Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale and was long listed for the prestigious Sobey Art Award in April 2020.

Lindsay McIntyre is an award-winning film artist based in Vancouver, BC who works with 16mm film using experimental, handmade and documentary techniques, one of very few artists actively working in handmade emulsions today. McIntyre’s intimate and meditative short films focus on themes of portraiture, place, form and personal histories. In 2012. her short film "Her Silent Life" won Best Experimental Film at the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival and in 2013 McIntyre was the recipient of the Canada Council's Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award for Excellence in Media Arts, given for outstanding artistic achievement by a Canadian mid-career artist. In 2019 she was featured on the cover the Inuit Art Quarterly's summer issue on "Film" and in an accompanying feature story, "Between Making and Telling" by author Taqralik Partridge. In 2021 she won the Women in the Director's Chair Feature Film Award worth $250K in support of her upcoming narrative feature film "The Words We Can't Speak". Her award-winning films have been shown worldwide and are included in the permanent collections of the Art Gallery of Guelph in Ontario and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts Collection.

Based in Montreal, QC, Niap (Nancy Saunders) is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist who divides her time between the city and her home community of Kuujjuaq, Nunavik—a place that continues to deeply influence her work. Working across media, Niap thoughtfully investigates her cultural heritage and identity as an Inuk woman through her practice. Working across painting, performance, sculpture and photography, Niap has produced a wide ranging body of work from murals to immersive installations to portraiture. In 2018, Niap was the recipient of the IAF's Watt Scholarship and in 2019 she was featured on the cover of the Inuit Art Quarterly's "Earth" issue. Her work has been collected by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and Avataq Cultural Institute among others and has been exhibited across Canada.