Helen Kalvak
Helen Kalvak (1901-1984) - Artist Biography
Artistic Community: Holman Island, Northwest Territories, Canada.
Helen Kalvak was born in 1901 in a camp on the shores of Tahiryuak Lake on Victoria Island. She was the only surviving child of Inoqtamik and Halukhit, who taught her traditional legends and hunting skills. Her father began training her as an angatkok, or shaman; eventually, she was respected not only as an angatkok but also as an atotainaktok, a person with supernatural powers that came from both spirit helpers and magic songs. She was one of very few women to have traditional tattoos on her face and hands. She married Manayok, a hunter from eastern Victoria Island, and both were celebrated as singers. In 1960, Manayok passed away and Kalvak moved into the community of Ulukhaktok. Father Henri Tardy encouraged her to draw after watching her sketch of some clothing before she made it, which was unusual. She produced more than 1,800 drawings between 1962 and 1978, 154 of which were made into prints between 1965 and 1985. Her graphic works tend to focus on themes of traditional life in the western Arctic in surprising detail. Her keen eye recorded everything from the design of traditional skin clothing to the minutiae of insects that live in the local water, all of which are represented in this collection. She was inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy in 1975 and into the Order of Canada in 1978.
Born into a traditional life outside of established Canadian settlements, Kalvak identified herself as a shaman prior to converting to Christianity. Featured in the Inuit Art Quarterly’s 2017 feature “30 Artists to Know,” and nominated by her granddaughter, Julia Ekpakohak, the importance of art for Kalvak was rooted in her family. The importance of art for Kalvak was deeply rooted in the idea that success for her as an artist was directly connected to success for her family. This resonated with me, growing up with struggling Inuit artists in my community and seeing how much work they put into incredible art that told stories.
Until the mid 1990s there was limited access to Inuit storytelling through writing or film. Outside of the oral tradition, it was prints like Kalvak’s Nightmare (1967) that inspired my young imagination both to create art, and to seek out traditional knowledge from my Elders. In this comic, I wanted to depict the passing of that same kind of intergenerational storytelling using the bold lines and detailed facial expressions that distinguish Helen Kalvak’s work to this day.
Statement by Julia Ekpakohak c/o Inuit Art Foundation:
I started making art when I was very young, maybe two years old. I learned from my grandmother Helen Kalvak. She made drawings, prints and wall hangings from sealskin. She used to tell me stories and then ask me to draw them. I would put them down on paper: a scene of a hunt, or travellers or animals and birds on the land or in the ocean. We would make drawings together.
My mother, Elsie Nilgak, and my grandmother told me that making artwork was going to help me provide for my family. That is very true for me today. I make carvings, crafts and prints, mainly stencils and etchings. Everything that I have done with my artwork is mainly what my grandmother and mother taught me. To this day, I still use the same patterns and techniques that I learned from them. I use materials I find out on the land to dye my own textiles because it is very costly to import dyes and other finished materials. Being raised in and living in Ulukhaktok my entire life, I try to use the traditional knowledge that I was taught. – Julia Manoyok Ekpakohak
