Victoria Mamnguqsualuk (1930–2016) is well known for translating Inuit oral stories into visual expressions such as wallhangings, drawings and prints. This untitled wallhanging tells a story, and the vibrant colours and textures of the fabric in this piece pull me into a world I do not know. Although the story in the work is unfamiliar to me, the textile medium is reminiscent of intimate objects in my own life: the throw blanket my mother knit for my now-deceased grandmother, or my grandmother’s own hand-sewn quilts. These memories cause me to picture Mamnguqsualuk’s artwork hanging in a family home, absorbing and telling stories—always in the background while another story is being told. When I look at this piece, I imagine Mamnguqsualuk listening to stories from her grandmother late into the night.
Transformation is an especially poignant theme here, and a common one in Inuit art, reflecting a sense of unity with the environment and the idea that all life is interconnected. In Mamnguqsualuk’s wallhanging, identical hunters on both sides lunge toward a central figure, who bursts outward in a process of transformation. His body changes into multitudes of birds, fish, human faces, polar bears and small animals, and these new forms spring in all directions. I imagine the person in transformation as an intermediary between the hunters and the animals they pursue. Above this scene, two wingless bird-like beings with many human faces all over their bodies fly toward the centre of the mirrored composition. The sheen of what looks like mercerized cotton stitches against the red wool of the hunters and the birds is striking, while the embroidery of the figure in the centre stands out as a cacophony of colour against a pale beige base.
Visual elements that make up the surrounding environment are also in a state of change. There are blue raindrops embroidered across the background; in the bottom third of the composition, these stitches change colour to green, transforming them into something that suggests little buds of grass. A rolling, symmetrical border of white faces surrounds the scene; their repetitious forms, the whiteness of their faces and the shadow of their hair contrast with the brown wool duffle, evoking hummocks of sea ice. To me, these impressions represent a sense of unity with the land and sea, giving me nostalgia for my own relationships with lands where I’ve lived in times past, mingled with the urgent importance contemporary Inuit artists place on their own relationship with the land today.
Mamnguqsualuk creates a dynamic sense of story in her composition using colour, form, spatial relationships and the flow of her stitches. Pictorially, Mamnguqsualuk’s wallhanging expresses images of transforming figures, but materially it also becomes a shapeshifter itself, a visual image from an oral story. It is a reminder that living traditions are always in a process of change, even as the tales told help anchor people to the past.
Nyssa Komorowski is a PhD candidate in Art History at the University of Toronto, specializing in book history and print culture. Her doctoral research investigates the costumes and performances of E. Pauline Johnson Tekahionwake (1861–1913), with a focus on research-creation methodologies and Haudenosaunee epistemological practices.