From the Editor
In the spring of 2016, Alethea Arnaquq-Baril’s landmark documentary Angry Inuk screened for the first time in Toronto, ON, as part of the Hot Docs Festival. The film, which was reviewed in our Fall 2016 issue ( IAQ 29.3), details the fraught and ongoing political, economic and cultural impacts of anti-sealing sentiments, and of the policies they shape, on Inuit communities. Tracing the attempts of a group of Nunavummiut to halt and later reverse a 2010 European Union ban on seal products as well as Arnaquq-Baril’s own advocacy work, made famous through the #sealfie campaign, the filmmaker weaves a layered, multigenerational and multivocal account of the Inuit seal hunt today. The film deftly employs first-person narrative and dark humour to capture the frustrations and resiliency of a community that has been repeatedly made to justify its inherent right to the seal hunt, but also to environmental stewardship and self-determination—themes which are similarly present in the work of Maureen Gruben, whose piece Sur vival (2018) graces our cover.
This issue brings together artists thinking and working at the intersections of a material that is inherently political and unequivocally personal: skin. Beginning with a Portfolio on garments, artworks and objects created from fur, hide and pelts, “Skin Stories” foregrounds the personal relationships and intergenerational histories that are often nestled between artists’ meticulous stitches. Three artists hailing from across the circumpolar world, Gruben, Sonya Kelliher-Combs and Joar Nango (from Canada, Alaska and Norway, respectively), are profiled in “Surface Tensions.” Each thoughtfully fuses familial and community memory into works that pair the organic with the synthetic to produce new composite forms, laden with history and meaning. The resulting works conjure, intentionally or not, the complex politics of identity and place in a globalized world, including the movements of goods and materials, as well as those of human bodies, through spaces, over borders and across distances—vast and small.
Shifting to the tactility of the human form, Daniella Sanader’s Feature “Soft Shapes and Hard Mattresses” considers love, sex and desire in recent graphic works by Jutai
Toonoo (1959–2015), Annie Pootoogook (1969–2016) and Shuvinai Ashoona, RCA. Through juxtapositions of intimacy and anonymity pictured in both imagined and quotidian spaces, Sanader’s piece captures a vivid and nuanced view of erotic Inuit art that resists easy categorization. Finally, from drawing the body to drawing on it, our Features conclude with an interview with photographer Cora DeVos, who has documented the Inuit Tattoo Revitalization Project for the past two and a half years. This project, spearheaded by tattoo ar tist
Angela Hovak Johnston, has seen dozens of women tattooed with traditional Inuit designs in three Arctic communities. DeVos has been the primary documentarian since the earliest days of the project. Presented in both English and Inuktut, we hear from the photographer on the powerful experience of capturing the unique stories of these women, as they reclaim and celebrate their cultural heritage.
This summer issue, which leads with works by contemporary ar tists, is complemented by a legacy editorial by Susan Gustavison that looks closely at the history of sealskin stencilling in early Inuit printmaking and the persistent narratives surrounding their use.
From a focus on the body itself, to that which covers or adorns it, I hope you find the diverse meditations on skin in this issue provocative, engaging, thoughtful and nuanced.