In Conversation with Curator Kathryn Delaney

Come and meet artist Mary Paningajak Alaku, from Ivujivik, Nunavik. Mary will present her work and share techniques of bookmaking involved in her current practice in an informal artist talk and workshop.

This opportunity to meet and work with Mary is thanks to her presence in Montréal as an artist in residence in the Inuit Artist program of the Avataq cultural Institute and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.

Recently, Mary has been living in Montreal thanks to an artist residency program for Inuit artists from Nunavik. Giving Mary the nessecary space and distance to explore the stories and ideas related to her life and her fathers diary. With a fearless voice Mary invites us into her emotionally charged images that break with a stéréotypical idea of what Inuit art is suppose to look like.

Presently staying in Montreal thanks to an Inuit artist residency program funded by the CALQ and Avataq cultural Institute - Join Mary at La Centrale for an artist talk and an informal créative bookmaking workshop.

Living today in Ivujivik, an Inuit community of 370 people in Nunavik (Northern Quebec), Mary Paningajak Alaku is a multi-disipline visual artist. Daughter of Tivi Paningajak, Mary followed her father as he drew and practised stone cut printmaking and soapstone sculpture. Mary accompanied her father on the land and learned how to hunt and fish.

Mary has been a participant of the Nunavik Art Workshops for the last twelve years. These workshops bring together proffesional and amature artists from across Nunavik. In 2009 Mary was introduced to a storybook making workshop. She adapted her ink pointillism technique she had learn in an earlier workshop to create her storybooks. Mary is facinated by multipule images that result is animated books and relief linocut prints. With an approach to expérimentation Mary created a series of crochet human and animal masks.