Artists, curators, residents gather to celebrate Inuit art

Sherlyn Kadjuk shows off the goose foot she successfully skinned at a basket-making workshop held by Igah Hainnu of Clyde River at the 2015 NACA Arts Festival in Rankin Inlet from Aug. 20 to 26. (PHOTO COURTESY NACA)

Baskets, like the one pictured above made by Igah Hainnu of Clyde River, were all the rage at this year’s NACA Arts Festival in Rankin Inlet. This basket is made of duck feet, but the baskets Hainnu showed fellow artists and festival-goers in Rankin Inlet incorporated geese feet. (PHOTO BY GORETTI KAKUKTINNIQ FACEBOOK)

Artists, presenters and organizers of the 2015 NACA Arts Festival pose in the Rankin Inlet community centre Aug. 26. (PHOTO COURTESY NACA)

So what has six feet, used to honk and now draws crowds at Nunavut art festivals?

Give up? A basket made from three pairs of geese feet, of course.

The Nunavut Arts and Crafts Association held its annual arts festival in Rankin Inlet from Aug. 20 to Aug. 26, an event that included more than 30 artists from around Nunavut, art lovers from around the world and art workshops open to the public.

And the hottest item everyone seemed to be talking about this year were Igah Hainnu’s baskets made from the skinned feet of geese.

“I didn’t even know about goose-feet basket weaving. That was something completely new to me,” Stefan St-Laurent, a gallery curator from Gatineau, Que., told Nunatsiaq News in a recent interview.

“One of the most successful workshops was making baskets with goose feet,” said Theresie Tungilik, a festival organizer from Rankin Inlet.

“I’m taking home a goose feet basket a friend made in the workshop,” said Martha Cerny, owner and operator of a museum in Bern, Switzerland.

Cerny said what impressed her about the baskets was the traditional approach, contemporary application and the sustainability of an art form that uses what others might throw away.

“This is not a throw-away society, as we call it. They’re trying to make do with what they have.”

Hainnu, from Clyde River, told Nunatsiaq News Sept. 8 that her grandmother showed her how to make the baskets some 30 years ago.

“Back then, they had no little bags where they could put stuff like wicks for their qulliq, or little wooden dolls — the little belongings they had, they needed some kind of bag to store them in,” Hainnu said from her home on north Baffin.

“They were trying to think of ways of making bags out of anything, so that was one way: they could make bags out of bird feet.”

Hainnu, recently elected for a two-year term as chairperson of NACA’s board of directors, explained that it usually takes six webbed feet from three birds to make a basket.

“I use snow goose or Canada goose. Those are the two main ones because they’re bigger.”

But sometimes, Hainnu said she’ll use duck feet to make pen holders for office desks.

“And just to make it look fancier, you add sealskin.”

Tungilik, who is also a Rankin Inlet hamlet councillor, said the NACA arts festival started meeting in communities outside Iqaluit two years ago.

Last year, NACA held the festival in Cambridge Bay.

“When it’s closer to people’s home, they want to be involved. This year it was in beautiful Rankin Inlet and we made it a blast, with lots of activities planned during the day and evening,” Tungilik said.

The event is a financial boost as well, not only for Nunavut artists but for the local economy, as airlines, hotels and restaurants enjoy a surge in business, Tungilik said.

“I think the artists had a really good time, not only because of their sales, but because the workshops we added… helped them learn new techniques and skills.”

St-Laurent, who curates the AXENEO7 gallery in Gatineau, said the sense of community and camaraderie between artists stood out and made for a better learning environment.

“We’re not used to seeing that kind of atmosphere in the South, where people are much more competitive and secretive in sharing their techniques.”

St-Laurent gave a presentation at the festival on emerging trends in contemporary art from around the world and where Nunavut fits into that canon.

“There’s a really strong interest in what’s coming out of Nunavut today,” he said. “Museums are really seeking out artists that aren’t necessarily making work that you would typically think comes out of the North.”

Cerny, who also attended last year’s festival in Cambridge Bay, would probably agree with St-Laurent.

Her Swiss museum, called Cerny Inuit Collection, will travel with an exhibit to Monaco this fall to feature Inuit artists alongside Italian and Swiss artists.

The exhibit, Cerny said, aims to focus attention on how artists in the North are depicting their impressions of climate change, and drawing a link to climate change ideas expressed by artists from the European alpine.

But for Cerny, the highlight of this year’s festival — the seventh or eighth NACA festival she’s attended — was the hands-on learning at the workshops.

“My highlight was being able to have contact in one place with so many people from different parts of Nunavut. All those different views in one place, without having to travel to each community.”

Hainnu agrees with that.

“It never hurts to learn new things. Doing art, you get better ideas doing lots of things. And it’s even better when you try them out, hands on,” Hainnu said.

Next year’s festival will likely be in the Baffin region, Hainnu added, but a community has not been selected yet.

And the success of this year’s festival is largely due to the “strong” and “reliable” NACA staff, she said.

“They’re so supportive to artists in Nunavut, they’re awesome.”