Allysa Felix is a multidisciplinary artist who was born in Tuqtuuyaqtuq, Inuvialuit Settlement Region, NT, and currently resides in Inuuvik, Inuvialuit Settlement Region, NT. Her artistic practice includes beadwork, embroidery, sewing and writing.
Felix started her artistic practice with beadwork, which is her favourite medium to work in, and sewing. She learned how to bead at the Jacobsen Youth Centre in Tuqtuuyaqtuq when she was 13, and she learned how to sew by watching family members do it. Felix started off creating Kalaallit-style necklaces, which she was inspired to make when she saw them on a trip to Kalaallit Nunaat in 2017, and has since moved on to creating earrings, pins and lanyards. She tends to use materials like hide and stroud. In 2024 she started selling her work and taking commissions. “I mainly bead for other people so that’s my motivation too,” [1] she says. Writing is another part of Felix’s practice. She writes non-fiction pieces that focus on colonialism and how it shaped the Inuvialuit Settlement Region. Her writing has been published in Tusaayaksat Magazine, where she worked during high school.
In all the mediums Felix works in, she is inspired by her family, the land and the colours around her. A pair of earrings featuring long strands of white, orange and dark red seed and delica beads were inspired by the changing colours of akpiit. She is inspired by her grandfather Navaluk, who made ulus and sleds, and her grandmother Rhoda, who was a talented sewist and beader. “I still have some of her work that’s older than I am. It’s way more advanced than what I can do now!”
One of Felix’s main goals for the future is to create an installation piece made of bottle caps, which was inspired by her time working as a bartender. “Alchohol was introduced to us, and it [the installation piece] would have a double meaning of my time as a bartender and the effect of alcoholism in the North,” she says. She would also like to expand her practice to tattooing.
When she is not making art, Felix works as a birthworker for the Northern Birthwork Collective. She also works for the Great Northern Arts Festival, in Inuuvik, coordinating and helping prepare for the event.