Hannah Tooktoo
Multidisciplinar y ar tist Hannah Took too is, in many ways, already a household name in Canada. Originally from Kuujjuaq, Nunavik, QC, and now working from her home in Montreal, QC, Took too is known for her advocacy work, which includes her famous bike ride across Canada in 2019 to raise awareness for the suicide rate in Inuit Nunangat. Now studying Fine Arts at Dawson College, Took too has begun exploring a range of media, from painting and beading to carving and amauti-making, while raising her two young children. While her ar t and advocacy may appear to exist in separate arenas on the sur face, Took too leads with the same intention in her ar tistic production as she does in her activism.
“The energy you put into any thing will come out in the final product,” she explains. “Like my grandmother taught me, you need to think good thoughts whenever you’re creating any thing, like a pair of boots. If you’re frustrated and you’re having a hard time, you have to put that work down and come back to it later. The person that will wear them will carr y the energy you have put into them, so they may have anger or dif ficulty in life if that is what you put into the boots.”
Took too tends to favour figurative painted work depicting ever y thing from legends passed down through generations to depictions of women. Women are key in her work, as many of her earliest ar tistic influences growing up in Kuujjuaq were the women in her life, including her mother, aunts and grandmothers. These women taught her skills such as beading and sewing, which she still employs to this day.
The women in Took too’s paintings radiate a sense of calm or wisdom and are frequently adorned in traditional clothing and tat toos against vivid or pat terned backgrounds. In one, a baby nestles into the hood of an amauti wrapped with a tartan shawl. In another, Sedna dances against a hypnotic background of blue whirlpools. In yet another por trait, a woman with braided hair and closed eyes is shown with a bright red handprint splashed across her mouth—an increasingly recognizable symbol for awareness of the gendered violence faced by Indigenous women across North America.
“My work is about showing pride,” she says. “When I enter my workspace, I carry in my pride in my culture, but I also bring in issues that Inuit, especially Inuit women, face. I want to find ways where I can work through them and make them make sense, or better understand them.” For Tooktoo, ar tmaking provides the dedicated space needed, “to really dig deep and look at abstract issues from dif ferent angles.”
The safety of Inuit women is among the many causes that Took too explores through her art, as well as through her advocacy. For Tooktoo, art, culture, trauma and resiliency continually overlap and converge, becoming paintings, multimedia works and campaigns. They also demonstrate her intention to continually create positive change and healthy futures for Inuit. While women are
her favoured subject matter, Took too also creates images reflective of the flora and colour of Kuujjuaq that remind her of, and connect her to, home. Her paintings Cloudberr y Dreams (2020) and Fireweed (2020) are such examples of her highly pigmented style, depicting berries that look juicy enough to eat and the brilliant hues of arctic flowers.
For Tooktoo, there is always a message in her medium. “Whether through creating ar t or stor y telling, I am here to talk about issues that we face,” she says. “I’m just trying to shine a light and improve things for [those who] come af ter me.”
This Profile was made possible through support from the RBC Foundation’s Emerging Ar tists Project.