Mikak Semigak-Justason is a multimedia textiles artist from Saint John, NB, with roots in Nain, Nunatsiavut, NL, whose work encompasses knit, crochet, linocut prints, embroidery, screenprinting and collage.
Semigak-Justason’s artistic practice began in 2019, shortly after they got into skateboarding. “I was fascinated by women in the skate industry and what they were doing,” they say, explaining how it shifted their thinking from planning to be a nurse towards a more artistic career path. [1] “It clicked in my brain that I could be more than what I initially thought…life is so much bigger than working a nine to five.” From the beginning they were drawn to textiles—their Nunatsiavummiuk maternal grandmother used to make hats and their paternal grandmother knit mittens—and went on to spend a year in the New Brunswick College of Art and Design’s Textile Diploma program.
“I like to do pretty much everything,” Semigak-Justason says about the span of their practice. They learned screenprinting and machine knitting at school, but taught themself to crochet and make prints using linocut, two mediums that are now mainstays of their practice. Although Semigak-Justason primarily uses linocut to print paper, they have begun testing on clothing, upcycling tanks and crop tops to experiment with how the fabric takes the ink. In 2024 they began creating small-scale stamp prints using erasers, which they shape into Inuit tools and inventions as well as plants that are vital to Inuit ways of life.
They have also been working on a series of balaclavas made with crochet, which has become Semigak-Justason’s favourite medium to work with. “It lets you be creative without boundaries,” they say. “You don’t have to do a full row, you can start in a circle and build from there. It’s a more expressive way of creating something.” The balaclavas form a collection that speaks to what Inuit use from or offer to the land—one is coloured like tobacco, one like moss, another like blueberries, with a kakiniit tattoo design embroidered on top—that Semigak-Justason hopes brings a sense of healing. The design, originally made for a class project about protection and projection, is for Semigak-Justason a sort of armor, identifying a person’s culture even if their face is concealed. “I wanted to shine a light on things that are vital to Indigenous ways of life,” they explain. The series also speaks to Semigak-Justason’s desire to create a clothing line, as well as bringing together their interest in ecology, the environment, decolonization and activism. In 2024 Semigak-Justason expanded the collection further, incorporating messaging that speaks to events in the wider world, such as the events in Palestine, the Two-Spirit/Non-Binary movement and the viral “would you rather be stuck in the woods with a man or bear” phenomenon.
Semigak-Justason is also looking to expand their practice further, pursuing both quilts as a form of collage and embroideries that spread awareness about police brutality and religious colonization. Their goal is to create something instantly recognizable and “straight to the point,” with a cohesive message behind the work. “A lot of my pieces speak to lived experiences or things that I want to draw attention to,” they say. Among the artists that inspire Semigak-Justason are Mark Igloliorte, Barbara Akoak, Alootook Ipellie, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Sarah Ayaqi Whalen-Lunn and Maya Sialuk Jacobsen, whose hand poke tattoo practices in particular Semigak-Justason credits with igniting their passion to create art in the first place, as well as a desire to pursue hand poke tattooing herself. In 2024 their collage Is it My Body (2023) was published in the Spring 2024 issue of Petal Projections, and Semigak-Justason launched a clothing brand with their sibling Maisyn Semigak. Their company, The Spirited Brand, specializes in screenprinted t-shirts and sweaters; they currently sell online, but in future Semigak-Justason hopes to bring them to brick-and-mortar stores that specialize in Indigenous-made goods. “I want to be a good influence on Indigenous youth,” says Semigak-Justason about their goals for their artistic career going forward. “There is more to life than colonialism and capitalism…I want to show Indigenous youth that it’s possible to create a path for yourself.”