“Baker Lake Wall Hangings”

The community of Baker Lake is located in Nunavut on the northwest shore of Baker Lake near the mouth of the Thelon River. At 320 kilometres inland from the west coast of the Hudson Bay, Baker Lake is close to the geographical centre of Canada. Its Inuit name, Qamani’tuaq, means “where the river widens.”

“Baker Lake Wall Hangings” at the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre (MSAC) represents the first public viewing of their extensive Baker Lake collection, which includes more than 60 wall hangings dating from 1965 to the present. Initiated more than 30 years ago, the MSAC collection represents a significant period of creation and development in the culture and community of Baker Lake and its diversity of artists as well. In 2010, MSAC curator Judith Nasby—who has written extensively on the art of the region—travelled to Baker Lake to continue her research and study of Baker Lake artists and their work while adding new wall hangings for the collection, which are included in this exhibition.

Like the remarkable quilts of Gee’s Bend, the wall hangings of Baker Lake are complex tapestries of myth, story, community and magical transcendence, with wool felt fabric, or melton cloth, as the shamanic medium of transport. In a culture of oral traditions, the histories of the community are recorded in these wall hangings, made manifest with embroidery thread.

In Marion Tuu’luq’s Untitled (giant Inuk, giant fish), 1989, surreal giant fish cram the space of her work, while offering a bird’s-eye perspective of an igloo or iglu that seems to leap out of black space; a giant yellow Inuit person or Inuk boldly occupies a large part of the picture. Surrounding the Inuk, teams of hunters and sled dogs gather among other creatures, with abstract cut-outs of ice floes in black and white around their heads.

Like many other wall hangings in the exhibition, there is no traditional or relative sense of landscape with an expected foreground, middleground and background. All hierarchies between nature and landscape dissolve: everything is on the same visual plane, no matter what size or species. Time is conflated between past and present in the exhibition as earlier wall hangings reflect a more traditional way of life and more recent wall hangings are marked by the appearances of airplanes flying over herds of caribou.

Created by women, the works in “The Baker Lake Wall Hangings” make reference to an important social history among the artists of Baker Lake. In Martha Apsaq’s Woman Holding Fish, 1975, the central figure is a large woman dressed in an ornate black amauti, attended by birds at her head, dogs at her sides and two huge fish hanging from both her hands. Children and flowers surround her, blooming at her feet. The sense of empowerment—not just in the figure of the woman fishing but also in the creation of the wall hanging by the artist—is profound. Yes, this is “women’s work,” but it is also a way to harness vision, to play with the spirits, to record history, to reflect community—to capture and create a world with a woman’s own hands.

As one of the most collected artists in the MSAC collection, Irene Avaalaaqiaq is featured prominently in the exhibition, with five large wall hangings displayed together on a wall of the main gallery. Her dynamic interplay of colour, form and composition—in combination with her near-perfect technical skill as an embroiderer—is just one of the many distinguishing characteristics of her work. But it is her subject matter that speaks so uniquely. In Husband and Wife, 1999, joined figures with misshapen faces merge in a playful maelstrom of red and white and black, as dogs and smiling faces surround the curious couple, looking in on their private mythology. In Six Heads, 2004, a central figure with six heads smiles in every direction, casting an omnipotent and mischievous gaze at the other faces that edge the border of the wall hanging. There’s a profound sense of vision at play, as all the eyes look at each other— casting their glances down, up and across at each other—in a wool felt sea of perfect blue. And then one pair of eyes stares out, looking, it would seem, at you. All at once you understand that you are a part of the picture. It’s this transformative way of seeing, evident in all of “Baker Lake Wall Hangings,” that is the exhibition’s greatest strength. The gift of vision to its audience is this way of seeing. ❚

“Baker Lake Wall Hangings” was exhibited at the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, Guelph, from May 12 to September 11, 2011.

Christine Walde is a poet and writer living in London, Ontario.