Tunirrusiangit: Inuit artists sharing their gifts

Our identity as Filipinos who grew up on the islands is the bright, distinguishing thread through the creative life of wonder | wander | women - our blogs, our writing, and our art. Ethnicity is not something learned.

We learned to speak English, we learned the Catholic traditions and our history as colonials. We learned how to speak and read Filipino, but Filipino is who we are; that's why we sympathise so much with other indigenous artists of colonised countries.

From the AGO exhibition

First Nations and Aboriginal art are especially fascinating to us. We're not alone; living in the US we see the work of many artists inspired by Native American history and craftsmanship. It's beautiful, but we want to see art by contemporary Native Americans, who like us use their dual education and culture to feed their work and bring it to life.

Large Bird from the Sun, Kenojuak Ashevak
Courtesy of AGO

In Canada, curators and councils are reaching out to Native artists whose work formed such a huge part of the country's visual character. The Art Gallery of Ontario, or AGO, celebrated the lives of acclaimed Tlingit artists Kenojuak Ashevak and her nephew Tim Pitsiulak with the exhibition Tunirrusiangit, a Tlingit word which means 'Their Gifts'.

Kenojuak Ashevak was a pioneer of modern Inuit art, one of the first women in her community of Cape Dorset to take up drawing. Her father was a shaman, killed when she was six years old, and several of her children died while she was confined for tuberculosis. Despite these tragedies, she became a prominent community figure, successful and prolific.

Picture courtesy of AGO

Her stonecut print The Enchanted Owl became an iconic image in Canada, and was even made into a commemorative stamp.

Luminous Char with alternative colour print and stone 

Kenojuak's fame uplifted the other artists of her community. The demand for her prints helped support the stonecutters of Cape Dorset, indigenous craftsmen who mastered the art of stone carving and printing. Now Dorset Fine Arts makes prints for several world-famous artists and their distinctive chop can be seen on many of the works in AGO.

Swimming Bear, courtesy of AGO

Timotee/Tim Pitsiulak was Kenojuak's nephew, who passed away a few years before this exhibition. His work was just as prolific and striking as his aunt's but in a very different style. Tim worked with coloured pencils in black or white paper and his shading and colour sense were delicate and realistic while Kenojuak's work was bold and stylised. We especially loved his huge drawing of a polar bear swimming in dark water.

He was a sculptor as well, creating life-size (and larger) polar bear sculptures as well as this tiny container of a caribou and hunting equipment. Tim Pitsiulak was an artist as well as a traditional hunter. Along with other members of the community, he hunted walrus and seal meat which they distributed and shared. Making tools and garments out of every part of the animal.

Hero 4 by Tim Pitsiulak, courtesy of AGO

While on these trips he observed, photographed and drew the Arctic animals as conscientiously as he hunted them. His black paper drawings pulled us into his world, where traditional methods like pencil drawing and seal hunting merged with modern tools like digital cameras and laptops.

We felt privileged to spend time with these artists' work and inspired to do more of our own. We only hope more and more indigenous artists will be encouraged to share their inner lives and dual cultures - their gifts - with the world.