Based in Tikirarjuaq (Whale Cove), NU, and with roots in Kangiqliniq (Rankin Inlet), NU, Iqaluk (Mikka) Komaksiutiksak is a therapeutic arts practitioner and painter who creates work that combines traditional and contemporary Inuit beliefs, including spirituality, with the aim of fostering cultural understanding and healing. She also creates intricate wall hangings and practices throat singing, weaving elements of identity, resilience, shamanism and the impact of colonization with contemporary issues. “My main goal with my art is to bring collective healing to the Inuit community,” she says. [1]
Komaksiutiksak started painting as a child and started her career running arts workshops for Inuit children and youth. She started working with the Arctic Rose Foundation during their pilot project in 2017, which creates safe spaces through art forms, and was inspired to become a therapeutic arts practitioner. “I think that art is like a healing tool, and that’s why I like painting.” At the ARF, Komaksiutiksak worked alongside her godmother and founder of the organization, Susan Aglukark. Komaksiutiksak currently runs programming for youth and women to use art as a way to tell their stories, highlighting the process of artmaking rather than the end product. She brings her therapeutic arts practice to her current role as school community counselor for elementary and high school students.
Flowers are a common motif that recur across Komkasiutiksak’s work, whether it’s stitched daisies scattered across the soft green of a piece of wool duffle in a wallhanging, or painted petals forming a black-and-white canopy across a sheet of paper. “I love painting flowers because of the spiritual representation and the relationship we have with flowers,” she says. Komaksiutiksak’s piece Duality (2023) examines the concept of holding two things at once: the world we live in and the spirit world. In 2024 and 2025 she was commissioned by the Arctic Inspiration Prize to create two acrylic paintings for the program’s winners. Also in 2025, she completed her collection “Flowers and Spirits," which was sent to the Native Arts Society in Toronto, ON, to be sold.
Komaksiutiksak is inspired by her grandmother Iqaluk Komaksiutiksak, with whom she shares a name, was known as a seamstress and made beautiful wallhangings. “I feel like when I do art, her spirit is happy.” Susan Aglukark, through her work as a singer but also as the founder of the ARF, is another artist who inspires Komaksiutiksak. “She made being a recognized Inuk artist a reality to me. I could do art and do what I love and make a difference and create really powerful messages through different types of art.”
Throat singing is another part of Komaksiutiksak’s artistic practice. She grew up seeing people throat singing at community events and was inspired by the joy it brought to the community. She also watched and learned from her cousins throat sing growing up, particularly her cousin Nikki Komaksiutiksak, and continued to learn from different artists when she moved to Ottawa, ON. She now teaches throat singing to children and youth. In 2025, Komaksiutiksak placed fifth in the Qilaut Inuktut songwriting contest for her song Aatikuluga, which is a traditional ayaya song. In September 2025, she travelled to Iqaluit, NU, to record Aatikuluga, which will be part of the album with the other contest winners. “I feel like singing is a way to provide a healing space.” She currently facilitates a girls throat singing group in Tikirarjuaq, which focuses on female empowerment and cultural preservation.
Balanced against Komaksiutiksak’s painting, therapeutic arts practice, wallhanging creation and throat singing are her collaborations with photographers like her cousin David Kakuktinniq Jr. In these collaborations, she conceptualizes ideas and acts as a model to draw attention to social issues facing Inuit. Kakuktinniq Jr.’s 2022 photograph of Komaksiutiksak on the tundra, wearing a caribou hide and with a red handprint painted across her mouth is symbolic of the movement against Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirit People, and is an extension of Komaksiutiksak’s advocacy work outside of art, which includes organizing an Inuit Pride conference and a Red Dress Day Vigil in Ottawa, both in 2023. In this same year, she gave a talk at Creative Mornings in Ottawa, about the concept of simplicity in art and highlighting its relevance in contemporary contexts.
In September 2023 Komaksiutiksak was named the Inuit Circumpolar Council’s Artist of the Month, and in 2024 she received funding from the Ontario Arts Council to further her work with wallhangings. She has three main goals for the future of her practice: create a wallhanging to sit alongside one of her grandmother’s pieces at the Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq in Manitoba, to continue selling her paintings and to inspire Inuit children and youth to tell stories through their art. “A part of collective healing is being honest with our realities and showcasing the beauty of Inuit art,” she says.