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NUNAVUT - Throatsinger and Juno-nominated recording artist Tanya Tagaq Gillis likes to challenge convention. Her second album Auk Blood, released in 2008, features her passionate solo interpretation of Inuit throatsinging overlaid with hip hop beats and collaborations with Faith No More lead singer Mike Patton and rapper Buck 65, among others.

Her musical innovation earned Juno nominations in the best instrumental album and best aboriginal album categories.

Tanya Tagaq Gillis earned two Juno nominations this month for her second album Auk Blood. - photo courtesy of Tanya Tagaq Gillis

"It's such an honour," she said. "It's always nice to know that you get acknowledged when you work hard at something, right?"

Tagaq Gillis said she plans to attend the awards ceremony in Vancouver at the end of March.

In the meantime, she is touring Europe with dance hall, jungle and dubstep DJ Michael Red and percussionist Kenton Loewen of Vancouver. They will play in Bristol, England, this weekend and then perform a string of gigs in Portugal, the Czech Republic, Scotland and Estonia. They return to Canada for a Vancouver concert in early March.

"I've been all over Europe but I've never been to Estonia before," she said. "I haven't been to a place I haven't been for years so it's really exciting to try something totally different. I like to travel because you learn things from different cultures and every culture has something very, very important to learn from."

Tagaq Gillis brought Red to her hometown of Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, recently to expose the DJ to Inuit culture and record samples for their European performances. He captured the sound of ulus scraping, ice breaking, dump metal clanging and dogs howling.

"Every show is different," Tagaq Gillis said.

In the weeks leading up to her latest European tour, Tagaq Gillis returned to her old stomping grounds around Yellowknife where she attended high school in the 1990s.

"I've been at the gym every day trying to do at least an hour of cardio, because every night every show is long and throatsinging is really hard," she said. "I have a show every night for a couple of weeks so I have to get my lung capacity and my endurance up."

A graduate of the fine arts program at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Tagaq Gillis uses her time between tours to focus on her visual art. While in Yellowknife earlier this month, she painted in oil on canvas at Birchwood Gallery, where her recent work is on display.

"I came out of school wanting to become a painter, but it didn't turn out that way," she said. "I'm not going to jump around the world my whole life. It's exhausting in some ways and it's so adventurous and beautiful in other ways, but painting calms me down a lot."

She also made her first foray into acting last year, appearing in a six-minute short film soon to be released by Isuma Productions in Iglulik, Nunavut. Her performance included a nude scene.

"It's terrifying putting yourself out there like that," she said. "Because of my social veneer people tend to think that I'm very confident, but I'm really a very shy person. I'm scared like everybody and I'm insecure like everybody, but it's really good to acknowledge yourself. It helps you love yourself. If you're not going to do something you're scared of then you're not going to grow."

She spent her final few days in the North before her European tour in Cambridge Bay with family.

"I think I need to come back (to Cambridge Bay) to get my balls back," she said. "I find that the world will weaken me and coming home and going camping can just heal anything."

When a blizzard shut much of the town down earlier this month, Tagaq Gillis used the snow-filled silence to reconnect with her roots.

"When we were kids that would happen and we would just go play outside, so I got on all my stuff and I was walking all over the place," she said. "It was so eerie and clean and gorgeous. I draw a lot of my strength from home."