‘When anyone takes their life, we’re all touched by it’
Artist seeks to break silence around Inuit suicide with four paintings
An artist has created four monumental paintings about a boy who killed himself to draw attention to the epidemic of suicides among the Inuit.
The drawings are by Elisapee Ishulutaq from Pangnirtung, Nunavut. Originally created on a continuous roll of paper more than 10 metres in length, they have been divided into four framed panels 2½ metres long by more than a metre high. In the art world, it’s unusual to see paper works of that size.
The drawings are being shown in an exhibition of works by Ishulutaq at the Marion Scott Gallery on south Granville.
Ishulutaq said she made In His Memory to help break the silence around suicide, which has been declared a public health crisis among the Inuit. In northern Inuit com- munities, the suicide rate is five to 25 times higher than in the rest of the country.
“I drew this because I don’t want this to happen to others again,” Ishulutaq said. “I didn’t know the boy. I wanted to show that when anyone takes their life, we’re all touched by it.” Ishulutaq, who speaks only Inuktituk, was speaking through her grandson, Andrew.
Ishulutaq created the four drawings from memory based on a suicide that took place in the 1990s. She made them in a room in the local school in Pangnirtung, where children watched her draw. As she worked, she inspired some of the youngsters to create their own drawings.
Technical assistance for the project was provided by Paul Machnik, a Montreal-based printmaker.
The first panel shows two people in profile walking to the boy’s fu- neral in a church that has a bright red roof and a cross. The bigger figure is Ishulutaq, in front of another figure representing Machnik.
The second panel shows a group, again in profile, walking away from the burial site which is marked with a pile of rocks and a cross. In the third, the boy is alone on an island without family or friends around him.
The final panel shows the boy’s mother on the left with a smile on her face remembering a happier time before her son’s suicide. The boy is lying on the ground looking up to the sky beneath his pet bird.
“He looks like he knows something is going to happen,” Ishulutaq said. “He’s thinking lying down.”
Ishulutaq, 91, was born in 1925 on one of the small seasonal camps on Baffin Island. At the time, life was still traditional for the Inuit: men hunted caribou from sealskin kayaks and women made clothing out of hide, according to Robert Kardosh, director of the Marion Scott Gallery. Ishulutaq still wears a pair of kamik, traditional Inuit boots
made out of sealskin topped with fur.
“I don’t remember the last time I wore shoes,” she said.
She started carving and drawing in 1970. More than 90 of her works have been turned into prints and released as part of the Pangnirtung annual collection. Her drawings have also been used as the basis for large-scale tapestries.
To create In His Memory, Ishulutaq started by drawing an outline in pencil and then colouring in the figures and landscape with an oil stick, a kind of giant crayon with oil paint. Ishulutaq, who was taught to draw in pencil by her father, started using oil stick about six years ago to create large paper works.
She said she would love it if In His Memory was displayed in a setting where it could help Inuit youngsters talk about the impact suicide has had on their own lives.
According to the National Inuit Suicide Prevention Strategy, the high suicide rate only dates from the 1970s, when scattered Inuit communities were coerced into moving into bigger settlements. Other reasons contributing to the high suicide rate include colonization, sexual abuse in residential schools and racism.
Across the country, the national suicide rate between 2009 and 2013 was 11 deaths per 100,000; among the Inuit, the rate ranged from 60 per 100,000 to 275 per 100,000. Earlier this year, the Inuit community of Kuujjuaq in northern Quebec was devastated when five youths killed themselves in three months.
In July, a suicide prevention strategy was unveiled by Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the national Inuit organization, and Health Canada. Ottawa is contributing $9 million over three years to the strategy.