From the Editor
Embarking on an issue focused on painting, a medium not often associated with Inuit artists or Inuit art history, presented an interesting challenge—not dissimilar from those we faced in creating our Winter 2016 issue on Photography. How best to situate contemporary artists alongside and in relation to a media with a weighty colonial history? Painting, much like photography, has a long and intertwined relationship with empire building, nationhood and identity. In a Canadian context in particular, the legacy of the Group of Seven—Lawren Harris, A.Y. Jackson and Frederick Varley among them—and their near-iconic painted depictions of landscapes including the Arctic, largely devoid of human figures, in the early twentieth century were a critical tool in the creation of a national visual language that cast northern North America as rugged, pristine and untouched.
To offer our readers a nuanced counternarrative, we set out to trace a comprehensive art history of Inuit painting. What we found instead were historical pockets of activity and experimentation that occurred largely independently of one another and were heavily mediated by a given community’s access to the materials needed to produce such works. These included colour wash drawings in Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, in 1974, as well as oil stick and acrylic experiments in Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake), NU, from the 1990s onwards among other initiatives.
In the end, what pushed its way to the fore throughout production of this issue was the demand to document and share the vibrancy of Inuit painting now. Artists like Niap who work across the intimacy of watercolours— explored with an eye to the legacy of Varley’s Arctic images in “A Speck of Snow Falling on An Arctic Landscape”—to the expanse of built walls in this issue’s Portfolio where her work is joined by Charlotte Karetak, Sheree McLeod, Kailey Sheppard and Jessica Winters. Likewise, this issue’s conversation “State of the Art” brings together three early career painters, Bronson Jacque, Darcie Bernhardt and Aija Komangapik, and is moderated by Heather Campbell, an early adopter and trailblazing painter in her own right.
The cover artist for this issue, Megan Kyak-Monteith, might already be a familiar name to you. We first profiled Kyak-Monteith in our Winter 2018 issue, Exchange, and have been following her career closely over the ensuing years. The accompanying Feature, authored by Tarralik Duffy, considers the profound impact of place—and often the distances between places—as a catalyst for works rich in personal and collective memory and experience. Finally, the Profile artist for this issue is painter Logan Ruben, whose psychedelic colourscapes of acid green, magenta and teal signal an exciting artist to watch.
This final issue of the year also marks some beginnings and endings. On behalf of the IAF staff, I’d like to extend a heartfelt thank you to our departing Board Member Patricia Feheley, who has been an integral part of our organization for the past eight years. I’d also like to welcome Linda Grussani, a curator, writer and past IAQ contributor to the Board of Directors. We are thrilled to have you join us! Lastly, I would like to welcome Heather Campbell, who has joined us as the inaugural Strategic Initiatives Director for the IAF. We look forward to working with her to support artists working across the North and beyond, through the publication and across all of our programs. Welcome Heather!
As this year, one unlike any other, draws to a close I hope this issue finds you and your family and friends well. We wish you health and happiness in 2021 and look forward to filling your year ahead with new stories and beautiful art. Thank you for reading.