Sulijuk, The Truth: Themes in the Work of Annie Pootoogook

Nathan Fong ARCH 647 CM&T Studio Ricardo Castro

Sulijuk, The Truth: Themes in Annie Pootoogook Introduction Born in 1969, Annie Pootoogook is an Nanuvut artist who records the modern Inuit environment.1 Pootoogook draws from the details of her own life from mundane like eating dinner, and watching television to family violence. Using representations of these daily objects, she explores universal themes in her art. She won the Sobey Arts Award for Canadian artists under 40 in 2006. Pootoogook comes from a family with women artists. Napachie Pootoogook, her mother who died in 2002, created normative art is reflected below as more of a normative which romanticized traditional Inuit life. This is reflected in the drawing, Winsome Travellers.

Annie is an instinctive chronicler of her times. She shares this sensibility with her mother and her grandmother, both of whom used their drawings to share their way of life with an outside audience. Taken together, the work of these three women reveals the profound changes that have taken place among Inuit in Canada's far north over the span of the last 50 years. Annie's drawings reflect her experience as a contemporary female artist living and working in the changing milieu of Canada's far north. Although firmly rooted to the specifics of her time and place, she manages to transcend cultural boundaries and present the details of her everyday life in an engaging way, inviting the viewer into both her public and private worlds. From the apparently mundane (the line-up for the ATM machine at the Co-op store, watching television with her family) to the personal and intimate (her experience with spousal abuse, the loss of her mother) Annie expresses a wide range of content and emotions. Annie's work has been represented in several commercial exhibitions since 2002, including her first solo exhibition at Feheley Fine Arts in Toronto in 2003 entitled "Moving Forward". Her work attracted the attention of the prestigious Power Plant Gallery in Toronto, where her solo exhibition ran throughout the summer of 2006. Annie spent the summer of 2006 in Dufftown, Scotland where she was artist-in-residence at the Glenfiddich Distillery "Spirit of Creativity" program. She went on to win the prestigious Sobey Arts Award in October, 2006. Dorset Fine Arts, Available at http://www.dorsetfinearts.com/artist_annie_pootoogook.html, Accessed April 26, 2011.

Winsome Travellers, Napachie Pootoogook Medium: Etching, aquatint, Available at http://www.spiritwrestler.com/exhibitions/cape_dorset_2003.html, Accessed on April 28, 2011. Within and Without the Tradition This painting completed by Napachie Pootoogook is unlike her daughter Annies work. The normal Inuit tradition of portraying nostalgia of their former lives within a fishing community, living in igloos off the northern lands. In both her grandmothers Pitseolak and her mothers Napachie, works, Annie Pootoogook is unlike the normal Inuit tradition of portraying their own lives of the past as a nostalgic fishing community living in igloos and off the northern lands. Along with her grandmother, Pitseolak, and her mother, Napache, there is the sense of entering the there is the sense of entering the feminine domain of drawing. Men create

sculptures that are bought and sold in the international market. Women on the other hand are closely associated with drawing. 2

Along with their tradition notion of frankness and authenticity, the younger Pootoogook, Annie, practices the concept of sulijuk which means it is true. It embodies the sense of liveliness and realism.3 This sense of depicting the real

Pootoogook and her mother visited her often to watch her work. The experience is depicted in this drawing, which shows Pitseolak in profile (her characteristic thick-rimmed glasses clearly visible) next to her two rapt descendents. Among other things, the picture is a heartfelt symbol of the female tradition in Inuit drawing; Inuit men, for the most part, are associated with sculpting. David Balzer, Culture Clash:Annie Pootoogook Captures Canadas North-South Divide, CBC.ca, June 27, 2006, Available at http://www.cbc.ca/arts/photoessay/pootoogook/index2.html, April 25, 2011. 3 Emily Elisabeth Auger, The Way of the Inuit: Aesthetics and History In and Beyond the Arctic, Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2005, p.108.

pervades many of her paintings including scenes of domestic abuse, criminal acts and

mental health issues.

Man Abusing His Partner. (All drawings are by Annie Pootoogook unless noted otherwise).

Shooting a Mountie.

Jenny Fraser, an art historian, observed:

[Pootoogooks] focus is on scenes of prosaic domestic tranquility as well as domestic abuse her own and that of other Inuit women mental illness and alcohol abuse. Unflinching, she depicts modern Inuit life as she sees it, rather than producing the traditional scenes that people in southern Canada have come to expect. There is tradition in Pootoogook's work, however. It is the Inuit concept of sulijuk, meaning when something "is true or real." Her focus is on scenes of prosaic domestic tranquility as well as domestic abuse her own and that of other Inuit women mental illness and alcohol abuse.4

Jenny Fraser, Interior spaces, northern places: Nunavut artist Annie Pootoogook's artwork is observational and narrative. Canadian Medical Association Journal, October 24, 2006;

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(9). doi:10.1503/cmaj.061187, http://ecmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/175/9/1100. 6

The Depiction of Everyday life including Southern Imperialism from Canada

The tourist gaze is directed to features of landscape and townscape which separates them off from everyday experience.The viewing of such tourist sights involves different forms of social patterning, with a much greater sensitivity to visual elements of landscapethan normally found in everyday life. People linger over such a gaze which is then normally visually objectified or captured through photographs, postcards, films, models and so on. These enable the gaze to be endlessly reproduced and captured. All over the world the unsung armies of semioticians, the tourists, are fanning out in search of the signs of Frenchness, typical Italian behaviour, exemplary Oriental scenes, typical American thruways, traditional English pubs. John Urry in the Tourist Gaze 5:

As we mentioned above, Pootoogook, eschews traditional Inuit motifs that are part of the tourist gaze of the Other. In First Tourist, an Inuit stands in front of the stereotypical symbol of Inuit culture, the Inukshuk, which one can see on television or even tourist curio shops. It is as if the Inuits are to be consumed as souvenirs for the south. Here, the Inuit is expected to play the role of the stereotypical Inuit. Is it a nod to Robert J.Flahertys 1922 documentary, Nanook of the North? We, the southern tourist, are invited to gaze upon the southerner gazing at the Northerner. Who is the Other here, then, the southerner or the northerner or both?

John Urry, The Tourist Gaze, Second Edition, London: SAGE, 2002, p. 3.

First Tourist.

The watching of seal hunting on television through tourist eyes. Available at http://www.feheleyfinearts.com/gallery/exhibitions/pootoogook/index3.shtml, Accessed April 28, 2011.

Once again we can ask Is it a nod to Robert J.Flahertys 1922 documentary, Nanook of the North? We, the southerners are invited to view the southern televised view of seal hunting by Inuits. Is it a sly critique of the modern Inuit and the loss of its culture or a critique of the southern way of life that has crept into the Inuit way of life?

This sly dichotomy continues in the domestic field where Pootoogook reveals the Inuit home with televisions which let them explore both southern programs or the APTN (Aboriginal Peoples Television Network). Are Inuit eyes taking on the imperialist eyes of the south here? Are they learning how they are or were? Is it documentary or is it the theft of an identity for an ersatz stereotype? The cultural imperialism of the south permeates the Inuit domestic space as well. Pat Feheley, who sells Pootoogooks works commented "It's depicting Inuit lifestyle but in her case it's immediately contemporary lifestyle, so that there's the culture, southern and northern... You'll see a family sitting down to a meal with ketchup and co-op bought food with a seal". 6

TinaRose, Mother, daughter art team capture contemporary Cape Dorset. Toronto exhibit shows some of the darker realities of Inuit life, Nunatsiaq Online, June 24, 2005.Available at http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/archives/50624/news/nunavut/50624_11.html, Accessed at April 29, 2011.

Note the seal, the red tool box and the Red Rose Tea.

Family Dinner with Ketchup (a southern infiltration), Available at http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/archives/50624/news/nunavut/50624_11.html#name, Accessed April, 28, 2011.

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These images show that southern consumerism has penetrated the Inuit way of life. Beyond the ketchup, there is television, the red tool box and the very southern Red Rose tea.

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Conclusion

Hailing from a long line of artists, Annie Pootoogook has successfully broken away from the traditional Inuit themes of whales and hunters to embrace the modern world capturing a modern sense of silijuk. The themes are honest and contain calm domestic scenes as well as violent images between spouses or with the police. As well, she documents as well the creeping consumerism from the south.

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Bibliography

Auger, Emily Elisabeth. The Way of the Inuit: Aesthetics and History In and Beyond the Arctic, Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2005.

Balzer, David. Culture Clash: Annie Pootoogook Captures Canadas North-South Divide, CBC.ca, June 27, 2006, Available at http://www.cbc.ca/arts/photoessay/pootoogook/index2.html, April 25, 2011.

Dorset Fine Arts, Available at http://www.dorsetfinearts.com/artist_annie_pootoogook.html, Accessed April 26, 2011. Fraser, Jenny. Interior spaces, northern places: Nunavut artist Annie Pootoogook's artwork is observational and narrative Canadian Medical Association Journal October 24, 2006; 175 (9). Rose, Tina. Mother, Daughter Art Team Capture contemporary Cape Dorset. Toronto exhibit shows some of the darker realities of Inuit life, Nunatsiaq Online, June 24, 2005. Available at http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/archives/50624/news/nunavut/50624_11.html, Accessed at April 29, 2011. Urry, John. The Tourist Gaze, Second Edition, London: SAGE, 2002.

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