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Northern News Services
Inuvik (July 23/01) - Friendships among artists. That's the heart of the Great Northern Arts Festival, which wrapped up Sunday in Inuvik.
 Gustavo Calvijo of Merida, Mexico officially kicked off the Great Northern Arts Festival by carrying in the whalebone with Baker Lake's Salomonie Pootoogook. The two carvers hugged in greeting. - Robert Dall/NNSL photo |
This year, true to the Great Northern Arts Festival spirit, one reunion spanned the country, while another spanned the continent.
Baker Lake carver Salomonie Pootoogook and Mexican Gustavo Clavijo met for the first time last fall at the First International Gathering of Indigenous Cultures in Merida, Mexico.
At home in Baker Lake but originally from Cape Dorset, Pootoogook had been fantasizing about travelling the world like some of his carving forebears.
"But I thought, my time's not yet," says Pootoogook. "A week later, someone called. I was really surprised, I had to say yes. I always say no, I was thinking later."
The call came from Clavijo, 7,000 kilometres to the south. via the Canadian embassy and Nunavut Commissioner Peter Irniq. The Mexican artist of Mayan ancestry wanted indigenous representation from Canada.
Last week, the two reunited in Inuvik for the week-long celebration of Northern art and culture.
The Great Northern Arts Festival has grown over the last decade to become a major opportunity for artists across the globe's Northern reaches to showcase their work and exchange ideas.
At the opening ceremonies, Pootoogook and Clavijo carried in the whalebone carving together, at the opening ceremonies.
Iqaluit's Matthew Nuqingaq drummed and led them into the gallery. Brad Heath of Yellowknife followed, bagpipes wailing. The audience hardly breathed. It was a profoundly emotional moment.
"To me," said the festival's outgoing artistic director, Marilyn Dzaman, "it's a statement of what this festival is all about -- making connections."
Later, sitting in a hot rehearsal room in the Midnight Sun Recreation Complex with his dear friend Pootoogook, Clavijo tries to explain, in broken English, the major difference between Canada's Far North and his home province of Yucatan.
Finally, Pootoogook jumps in: "He's trying to say it's really cold here."
The two share a chuckle, then Clavijo adds that the festival is beautiful and interesting, but he misses sleeping naked. His body shakes with mock shivers. At home he sleeps naked, without clothes, he says.
Pootoogook raises his eyebrows in mock horror, looking first at Clavijo, then at the reporter. Imagine bringing him up in the dead of winter, says Pootoogook, laughing.
The Inuit artist, on the other hand, confesses he found Mexico too hot for words.
Climatic contrast aside, the two insist that there are more similarities than differences between them. Clavijo urges me to take a good hard look at them.
"You can see that there are no differences in colour and traits of the face. We share the same origin. He looks like one friend in Mexico, same stature," says Clavijo.
There may be cultural and historical details that vary, but the Inuit heritage reaches back thousands of years, as does the heritage of the Mayan people.
But the most important similarity? Both Pootoogook and Clavijo work with animal and spirit imagery and their relationship with the natural elements.
Behaving more like brother than friends since fall, they seem to share a fateful connection. When Pootoogook first entered Clavijo's studio, the Mexican artist demonstrated his interest in Inuit art by pulling out a book he owned. It featured carvings by Pootoogook's father.
And while in Mexico, Pootoogook began a carving of a kulliq, the traditional Inuit lamp. When the time arrived to return home, the carving was unfinished. No worries, Clavijo told him. I'll finish it for you.
"Last night, I think for one moment the importance (of this gathering)," says Clavijo with emotion.
"You feel (it) in your body."
