Tunngasurit
Welcome
Maggie Napartuk - a multidisciplinary artist, main artwork on printmaking.
I will continue to express the patience, diligence, and perseverance our ancestors strived through, literally living on 'everyday is a new day'; so as to show, some pieces include the sun rising or setting. Most of the pieces in, cultural and traditional expressions.
The site provides information about upcoming shows, exhibitions and images of past projects, as well as information about my artistic journey from dream to realization.
Gallery
Here you can see the completed editions. Beginning from taking once a week linocut printmaking evening classes, in Puvirnituq. My collection started in May 2015, which led to co-instructing printmaking workshops in Nunavik; between January 2016 and April 2021.
4" x 6", Catching a seal as the sun sets, after a whole day of waiting.
4" x 6", Back of an amautik, with a male spearing the sun to show, everyday is a new day, with two women facing opposite, detailed with igloo and tents for seasons.
4" x 6", A mother making kamiks for her husband, with her child in an igloo.
8" x 10", my grandmother making a qajaq with sealskin, the trees behind are to show she's made five qayaqs in one summer season.
7" by 11", A lady softening kamiks inside a tent.
8" x 10", hunters travel afar during beluga harvesting season during fall time, the first snowflake falling on a beluga tail.
8" x 10", Welcome, an igloo with traditional hunting tools in a formation of the sun, with a sealskin drying in the background.
4" x 6", It's a beautiful day to be out hunting, a man approaching a seal coming up for air.
7" x 9", Amautik latch, made out of ivory. One that my father had made for my mother.
4" x 6", A man building an igloo.
6" by 8", When it's time to go seal hunting, a harpoon head, with a sealskin buoy and seal as background in pattern.
8" x 10", Two narwhal dancing in the sea.
6" x 12", Traditional Inuit snow goggles, with an Arctic Tern design. Snow goggles were worn to protect the eyes from the glaring bright white snow.
4" x 6", A man building an igloo, like the original print, but printed on colored background.
4" x 6", Inuit blocked river ways with rocks, known as a Saputik. Inuit used to make hip waders in sealskin.
6" x 8", Scraping dried sealskin, with a tool known as a Sakuurutik.
4" x 6", A girl at the entrance of a tent, looking outwards.
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Artist Bio
Maggie Napartuk - Multidisciplinary Artist
Maggie Napartuk is a multidisciplinary artist from Nunavik. She was born in Kuujjuaq and lived there for 10 years and moved to Puvirnituq and lived there for 24 years. She now lives in Montreal since October 2021. Her first memory of doing art was when she was in daycare around 5 years old, her educator made her paint. She says: “that’s when I fell in love with art”. Ever since she loves making arts in the forms of, ice sculpting, carving, jewelry making and printmaking.
At the Puvirnituq Snow Festival in March of 2013, there was an ice sculpting competition, she was shy at first, but she did a sculpture because she was curious and wanted to make an attempt then again in March of 2015.
“My style usually ends up with fine lines. My drawings are often based on our Inuit culture, tradition and end up drawing seals and what comes with it, harpoon, Kamiit (seal skin boots). I draw what I feel, hear and listen to our elder’s teachings or stories; also, to display what our ancestors were habituated to.” She says. Maggie finds inspiration from Inuit culture, the animals, and the tools that Inuit traditionally use for survival.
There was an evening printmaking class open once a week for the community, it was in May of 2015 this medium of arts was introduced to her. After receiving a grant from Avataq in July 2016; during two weeks of intense printmaking, she then learned that her great uncle, Henry Napartuk, was a well-known printmaker and a carver. Her great uncle mainly displayed seals as well. She has made 25 prints.
Her other form of arts go under traditional drum-making, ice scultping, and illustrating sketches. She considers her hobbies to be, beading and painting on house walls, she did a mural on her walls representing Inuit tools in a very contemporary style. As a creator in multiple mediums, she was born and raised into sewing and making outdoor clothing. And later on, learned to take on skills like down cleaning, seal and polar skin cleaning.
Her goal, as an artist, she wants to learn how to make wood carving and soapstone printmaking; like Inuit were accustomed to when they first began printmaking in the past.
According to her, her success thrived after receiving a grant from Avataq Cultural Institute to make prints and being able to sell her artwork all around Canada from Yellowknife to their region, Greenland, France, Australia, Greece and the US. She also says that overcoming her shyness was a success: “Everything falls into place and more opportunities come. I just love it”.
Since then, starting from January 2016, she began training in co-instructing in the travelling printmaking workshops held in the region of Nunavik; and then her first solo instructing a printmaking workshop was at Umiujaq in November of 2019.
Her message to the youth is to overcome their shyness like she did to show to the world their potential and to find new doors to available opportunities.
She has some of her prints in the permanent Avataq Cultural Institute collection as well as in the Fédération des coopératives du Nouveau-Québec collection.
https://iad.inuitartfoundation.org/artist/Maggie-Napartuk
Email: maakitree@gmail.com
Website: https://maakitree5.wixsite.com/mnapartuk
May 2024
