JESSE TUNGILIK
Although Jesse Tungilik is best known for his jewellery work at Aayuraa Studio, his mixed-media composition Nunavice Flag (2013) is arguably his most striking piece. Equally conceptual as it is visual, this work recreates the iconic Nunavut flag out of found objects—beer labels, cigarette cartons and used bingo cards—all roughly stapled to a plywood board. The official flag of the territory is full of meaningful symbolism: the central image of the inuksuk, coloured red to celebrate Canada as a whole, refers to the traditional stone markers found across the land; the white and gold symbolize the riches of Nunavut’s land, sea and sky; the blue Niqirtsuituq (North Star) represents both the navigational point and the leadership of community elders.
Nunavice Flag turns this symbolism on its head, replacing the richness of Nunavut’s land and heritage with the alluring but hollow promise of riches implied in gambling, alcohol and cigarettes, which are all Euro-Canadian imports to the Arctic. The assemblage’s irregular construction mirrors the nature of its subject matter. Used bingo cards, arranged by colour but not precisely aligned, labels that overlap almost haphazardly and the uneven surface all emphasize the materials’ past as discarded trash, underscoring the disconnect between the hopefulness of the Nunavut flag and the reality of contemporary life in Nunavut.
The construction of the work involved Tungilik’s family and friends, who assisted Tungilik in acquiring the raw materials, in addition to his own collection of discards from the roadsides of Iqaluit. The process draws as much on found-object art movements as on the long tradition of Inuit visual artists using found materials, such as caribou antlers and ossified whalebones, for three-dimensional works. However, Nunavice Flag is transformed into its own commentary on the influence of colonialism: instead of raw materials collected as by-products of life-sustaining hunting practices, Tungilik set about collecting the remnants of Western products that simultaneously influence Nunavut society and physically mar the Arctic landscape.
The construction and first exhibition of the work coincided with the celebrated unveiling of Paul Malliki, Looty Pijamini and Inuk Charlie’s Nunavut Land Claims Agreement (NLCA) monument on Nunavut Day 2013. Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. commissioned this massive sculptural work to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the signing of the NLCA, which ultimately led to the creation of Nunavut on April 1, 1999. The exquisitely carved monument explicitly celebrates the traditions and triumphs of Inuit in Nunavut. With much less fanfare, Nunavice Flag was quietly exhibited down the street from the NLCA monument as part of the annual Nunavut Arts Festival. Together, these two works momentarily offered a fuller and more complex picture of the contemporary realities of northern life, fourteen years into Nunavut’s ongoing history as Canada’s newest territory.