Remarkable talent emerges from women’s art exhibit

Laina Nulukie watches the reaction of her uncle Thomassie Echalook to her painting of him carving soapstone at the Aug. 18 art show in Inukjuak. (PHOTO BY MANCE LANCTOT)

Laina Nulukie used her uncle Thomassie Echalook as a subject for this painting, inspired by a photo taken which was published on the back cover of the fall 1993 edition of Makivik Magazine.

This group of Inukjuak women held a show of their paintings on Aug. 18 in Inukjuak. Montreal-based portrait artist Mance Lanctôt is at the far right.

When Inukjuak artist Laina Nulukie sat down to paint for the first time last June, it was the moment for which she’d been waiting much of her life.

“Since I was little, painting has always been a dream,” said Nulukie, who is a trained jeweller. “I imagined all these years how I would do it. Finally, I had the chance to let it all out.”

What she “let out” were two remarkable debut pieces— the first, a painting of her uncle, Thomassie Echalook, hunched over working on a carving and the second, two geese wearing amautiik facing each other as throat singers do.

“I surprised myself when I finished the first painting. I knew I’d do more,” Nulukie said. “I think it’s my time to live out that dream.”

So she will.

The 32-year-old mother of two will travel to Montreal this October to participate in the artist’s residency offered to Inuit artists through Augmaaggiivik, Nunavik’s arts secretariat.

Although Nulukie’s creativity has been channelled through jewellery and charcoal sketching up until now, painting will play a larger role in her future creations.

That, she says, is thanks to her southern counterpart, Mance Lanctôt.

The Montreal-based portrait artist was the recipient of one of Augmaaggiivik’s artists’ residencies, which bring a southern Quebec artist to Nunavik for two months. Her job – to capture the faces of Inukjuamiut.

Armed with extra canvas and paint, Lanctôt opened up a regular workshop for local painters during the week, which drew a regular group of painters.

Nulukie, Sarah Lisa Kasudluak, Eva Kasudluak and young painters Judy Alaku and Maina Tukai spent the summer learning to mix acrylic colour and prime canvas.

Together with Mance, the group produced 30 pieces, put on display at a public exhibit at Inukjuak’s Sikulik arena on Aug.18— the same day when many from outside the community were in town to hear the federal government’s apology to Inuit relocated in the 1950s to the High Arctic.

The group of artists call themselves Sanaqatigiit (working together) and their artwork reveals some of the community’s true colours.

Behind canvases of blood-red skies and tranquil blue lakes are a number of talented female painters in Inukjuak, most like Nulukie, with little previous experience.

No need, Lanctôt said – real artists already know how to create.

“When you’re an artist, a new medium is just a new pleasure,” she said. “You can pick it up right away.”

Lanctôt completed six portraits while in Inukjuak but plans to do more back home in Montreal. By the end of 2011, she plans to have enough art to do an Inukjuak-themed exhibit.

Lanctôt says she learned much from the women she worked with in Inukjuak, looking at art as a way to “explain your reality” and “represent your environment.”

“The experience was really more than I had hoped for,” she said. “There was such strong participation.”

The works produced by the Sanaqatigiit in Inujuak include a painting of two caribou, silhouetted against a heavy orange sun by Eva Kasudluak.

Posted on Augmaaggiivik’s Facebook page, an admirer comments “Eva, I didn’t know you could paint,” – to which she replies “I didn’t know either!”

The fun, say the Sanaqatigiit painters, is discovering the artistic freedom that painting offers.

“That day, I felt red,” said local painter Sarah Lisa Kasudluak, referring to a piece she painted of a red sky at dusk. “Red is my favourite colour, so I felt like indulging.

“And I’m so proud of my work. Everyone loved it.”