Book on Avaalaaqiaq deserves wide audience

Judith Nasby’s book about the life and art of a renowned Baker Lake artist, Irene Avaalaaqiaq, Myth and Reality, deserves a wider northern audience than most books about Inuit art.

More modest than the usual expensive, coffee-table sized books on Inuit art and artists, Nasby’s 120-page book is a well-illustrated and simply written history of Avaalaaqiaq.

And through Avaalaaqiaq’s story, reminiscences and full-colour plates of her art and photos, past and present, the book manages to tell a surprising amount about the history of her region, its culture and its people.

In 1999, Avaalaaqiaq began to tape her memoirs at the request of Nasby, an art curator at the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre in Guelph, Ontario.

The taping and translation of Avaalaaqiaq’s words was done by Lucy Evo, assistant manager of the Itsarnittavik, Baker Lake’s Inuit art centre. Nasby also interviewed Avaalaaqiaq personally with the help of Sally Webster, owner of Baker Lake Fine Arts.

The result of these and other interviews, along with 28 colour plates of Avaalaaqiaq’s work, makes a highly personal book that is as believable and touching as a personal conversation with the artist.

The comments of Nasby, a curator and public art gallery director for 25 years, many notes, photos, a bibliography and appendices also add to an understanding of Avaalaaqiaq’s life and the importance of her work.

Avaalaaqiaq, who was born 1941, didn’t have an easy early life. Raised on the land, she was orphaned twice as a young child, adopted out to several families and eventually married to a man she didn’t know well.

As a young mother in the early 1970s, Avaalaaqiaq tried her hand at carving, printmaking and wall hangings. Her first image for a wall hanging was something her grandmother used to talk about. Avaalaaqiaq drew a ptarmigan with two heads on it because her grandmother had told her that animals used to transform into humans.

“I was asked what were those images. I replied, ‘They are the stories my grandmother used to tell me in the evening, I did them out of memory.'”

Avaalaaqiaq was happy to be recognized for the art, and she said even then she thought that someday they would be displayed.

“When I first sold my wall hangings I bought a 340 Ski-doo that cost $800. I was so thrilled I had bought something big. I thought, ‘Now I’m really going to go fast without having to walk around.’ At that time I loved to dance. Mrs. Angaqyuinnaq gave me a pleated skirt that was made out of a jersey-like material. I put my dress on to go to the dance. The dance hall was close by. I could have just walked but I went by Ski-doo. When I pulled the cord to start the machine my skirt got caught in the carburetor. It sucked in my skirt and ripped it. I was so disappointed.”

In her wall hangings, Avaalaaqiaq often uses a distinct branching chain stitch that resembles the twigs of the Arctic willow. Avaalaaqiaq, as Nasby points out, means “willow” in Inuktitut.

“This stitch also signifies her powerful attachment to the land and its nurturing powers that she relied on in the early years of her life,” writes Nasby.

Nasby notes that similar designs were seen in the very old objects that were collected in the 1920s from the upper Kazan River area.

Avaalaaqiaq’s designs also reflect ancient drawing traditions with their flowing rounded forms, says Nasby, that show “the forces of nature and the spiritual union of humans and animals.”

Many of Avaalaalaiq’s wall hangings reflect her personal experiences and view of the world. She remembered seeing an iyiraq, a caribou that can speak, when she was a child sick with measles. Often shamans and birds are depicted in her work as the symbols of the spirit, freedom and wisdom.

As Nasby looks for the inspiration behind the many plates in the book, Avaalaaqiaq’s stories provide a oral history that makes her work and life more interesting.

“Husband and wife,” which she created in 1999, is one of the artist’s favourites.

“Sometimes when a husband and wife are walking on the tundra, it is so quiet, sometimes if they are not talking to each other, the husband will try to make his wife jump or the wife will try to make her husband jump, for fun, jokingly,” Avaalaaqiaq said.

Avaalaaqiaq has received many honors and her works hang in museums and public buildings.

“I try to keep our culture alive through my art. Each wall hanging I do tells a story or legend. Art is a way to preserve our culture,” she said when receiving an honorary doctorate at the University of Guelph in 1999.

Recently, Nasby visited Avaalaaqiaq in Baker Lake with a group of art dealers and others with a special interest in Inuit art. The northern launch of her book on Avaalaaqiaq fittingly took place there.

Irene Avaalaaqiaq, Myth and Reality, McGill-Queen’s University Press, $32.95 ISBN 0-7735-2440-1, www.mqup.ca