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Editor’s Note: This is the fifth post in Part V of the Visual Cultures of the Circumpolar North series edited by Isabelle Gapp and guest edited by Sarah Pickman.
“Ingenuity is our tradition” Heather Igloliorte (Inuk)1
“The arts are more than just material things” Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi (Alutiiq)2
In the interconnected Indigenous Circumpolar world, the past and present are closely linked. Issues, questions, and advancements in Arctic history are contemporary issues, questions, and advancements. Like Indigenous Arctic ancestors of the past, contemporary Indigenous communities are learning, creating, and working to preserve their knowledge for future generations and innovate as they live in an everchanging present. In spite of fraught and often violent histories with settler assimilative efforts and practices, contemporary Circumpolar Indigenous artists are continually seeking to (re)connect their art to the continuum of artists, artisans, craftspeople, and Knowledge Keepers from the past and those yet unborn in the future.
The contemporary artworks I explore are acts of visual sovereignty.3 They are acts of resistance against settler colonialism. They are acts of persistence—not only responses to something, but a reclamation of agency. They are innovative and they reflect indigenuity.4 Visual sovereignty is both a theoretical framework, used to analyze artworks as visual expressions of identity and embodiments of intergenerational knowledge, and an action, where Indigenous artists are participating and engaging with self-representation in whatever way they see fit.
Each of these artists, as well as many others, consider their choice in media as an essential element used to materialize their desired meaning.5 Material choices can be customary—those used for generations, like gutskin, hide, and bone—highlighting practices and techniques that are significant to the artist’s community. Not all materials, however, must be customary in order to be in dialogue with visual culture from the past. Some artists choose non-customary materials—such as plastic polymers, power cables, or resin—focusing on innovation and adaptation of customary methods and meanings to connect to the past in the present. Customary and non-customary materials, or any combination thereof, bind generations together. They foreground individual experiences and cultural knowledge, leading to complex and beautiful artworks that have much to say.
It is deeply important that to adequately begin to understand the meanings of these artworks and their temporal connections we utilize Indigenous perspectives, like materiality, when analyzing and interpreting. I offer these interpretations as culturally aware and respectful analyses that are rooted in the context of the artists’ lives and experiences, cultural histories, and thoughts for the future.
Credible, Small Secrets (2022-2023)
In August 2023, I visited the Alaska State Museum where I was immediately struck by the haunting beauty of Sonya Kelliher-Combs’s (Iñupiaq, Athabascan, Irish, German) Credible, Small Secrets. This installation features 355 pouches, called “secrets,” made from fabric, walrus stomach, rawhide, and acrylic polymer, embellished with human hair, glass beads, and nylon thread. Kelliher-Combs brings awareness to the experiences occurring between Alaska Native people and settler-colonizers, like the Catholic Church, by using various iterations of the pouches.6 Some of the pouches are created with gutskin, a material representing thousands of years of cultural knowledge and relationship development with the more-than-human world. Historically, it has been used for items like parkas and storage bags. Contemporarily, there has been a resurgence in the use of gutskin for utilitarian objects, as well as in abstract artworks like this. While the function of the gutskin “secrets” pouches are different than the parkas of the past, Kelliher-Combs’s choice of gutskin links this installation to the generations of creators that came before her. Her ancestors passed down gutskin processing and sewing techniques; Kelliher-Combs has adapted these practices to communicate various experiences. Credible, Small Secrets is an act of visual sovereignty—it embodies Indigeneity.
Waiting for the Shaman (2017)
At the inaugural exhibition, INUA, of the Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq in 2022, I stood captivated by Maureen Gruben’s (Inuvialuk) Waiting for the Shaman. Suspended in the air, the circular piece is made from polar bear paw bones and resin. As a representation of visual sovereignty, the polar bear paw bones speak to life in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region of the Northwest Territories. Polar bears are a marker of connection to the land and communities that have lived in tandem with them in the Arctic for millennia. Gruben connects the polar bear bones to Inuvialuit spirituality, referenced in the title of the work. The bones are waiting for the shaman, waiting for spiritual connection, leaving room in the unfinished circle for future relationships to be formed. In the marrow of the bones, Gruben inserted shades of green and purple to further connect to her homeland. The greens and purples of the aurora borealis have been witnessed in the skies by many generations of humans and their more-than-human kin, like the polar bears. Encased in resin, a non-customary material, this piece speaks to not only Inuvialuit culture, but also intersections between Inuvialuit culture and colonization.7 The bones in resin offer commentary on detrimental environmental effects on contemporary Circumpolar communities and ways of life.
Goavve-Geabbil (2025)
Over the years of researching Máret Ánne Sara’s (Sámi) dynamic and impactful art installations, I have become particularly interested in her recent Hyundai Commission titled Goavve-Geabbil. This multi-part, large-scale installation centers on her reindeer herding heritage. The Sámi term goavve refers to “a worsening environmental condition caused by extreme temperature fluctuations” leading to potentially detrimental effects on animal populations, like reindeer.8 This installation, made from power cables, towers above viewers at about ninety-two feet in height (twenty-eight meters) with reindeer hides suspended in between. Together the hides and cables represent the continued abuse of Sámi land by colonization, inextricably linking contemporary Sámi communities to the land and animals they are stewards of, as their ancestors always have been.9 The second part of the installation, Geabbil, meaning “adaptability,” directly references reindeer through its shape: the nose of a reindeer.10 Sara’s installation is an overwhelming act of visual sovereignty, embodying herself, her community, her more-than-human kin, and ancestors with a visual language that communicates across time and space.
I encourage everyone to take the time to continue their own path of learning and finding new contemporary Circumpolar Indigenous artists to support—a journey I am committed to as well.
Notes
[1] Heather Igloliorte, “Curating Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit: Inuit Knowledge in the Qallunaat Art Museum,” Art Journal 76, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 103.
[2] Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi, “Alaska Native Artistic Reclamation and the Persistence of Indigenous Aesthetics,” in The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Art Histories in the United States and Canada, ed. Heather Igloliorte and Carla Taunton (Routledge, 2022), 381.
[3] I focus on women’s art here because it is vital and dynamic yet has often been marginalized in studies of Arctic art and history, as has the Circumpolar region in Indigenous studies and art history. Women have always been artists. Contemporary Indigenous women’s art in the Arctic is deeply rooted in the legacy and knowledge of women before them.
[4] Joar Nango and Silje Figenschou Thoresen, “Thoughts on Indigenuity,” Chatter Marks no. 3 (Spring 2021): 10.
[5] I am basing my analysis of Indigenous materials/materiality on heather ahtone’s (Chickasaw/Choctaw) description of Indigenous materiality. In my own words, materiality is an interpretive tool through which to analyze the essential contextual information inherent in an artist’s choice of material. See heather ahtone, “Shifting the Paradigm of Art History: A Multi-sited Approach,” in The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Art Histories in the United States and Canada, ed. Heather Igloliorte and Carla Taunton (Routledge, 2022), 43-44.
[6] Sonya Kelliher-Combs and Ellen Carrlee, “Visceral: Verity,” in Visceral: Verity, Legacy, Identity: Alaska Native Gut Knowledge and Perseverance (Alaska State Museum, 2023), 3.
[7] asinnajaq, Dr. Heather Igloliorte, Kablusiak and Krista Ulujuk Zawasaki, “INUA Curators Share 4 Favorite Artworks from the Exhibition,” Inuit Art Quarterly, April 5, 2021, https://www.inuitartfoundation.org/lite/iaq-online/inua-curators-share-4-favourite-artworks-from-the-exhibition.
[8] “Hyundai Commission: Máret Ánne Sara,” Hyundai Artlab, accessed October 14, 2025, https://artlab.hyundai.com/project/hyundai-commission-maret-anne-sara.
[9] “Hyundai Commission: Máret Ánne Sara,” Tate Modern, accessed October 14, 2025, https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/maret-anne-sara.
[10] Hyundai Artlab, “Hyundai Commission: Máret Ánne Sara.”
Feature image: Sonya Kelliher-Combs, Credible, Small Secrets, 2022-2023, printed cotton fabric, nylon thread, human hair, glass beads, walrus stomach, reindeer and sheep rawhide, acrylic polymer, and steel pins, installation view from the Visceral: Verity, Legacy, Identity: Alaska Native Gut Knowledge and Perseverance exhibition at the Alaska State Museum, May-October 2023. Photo by Tess McCoy in August 2023.
Tess McCoy
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