Nuvisavik: The Place Where We Weave

The pictures in Nuvisavik: The Place Where We Weave, edited by Maria Von Finckenstein (McGill-Queens) are of tapestries that tell the story of traditional Inuit life. The tapestries were woven by members of a weaving studio in Pangnirtung, Baffin Island: thirty years ago, southerners introduced tapestry weaving there as a way of providing employment for Inuit women. These women, who were already superb seamstresses and embroiderers, took hold of the European tapestry tradition and made it their own. Working communally and using drawings by other Inuit artists, they create images of the lives of their ancestors, stitch by tiny stitch. The book documents the evolution of Inuit tapestry-making from the earliest work, in which simple images and sometimes clumsy colour transitions are seen, to the most recent work, which features more complex scenes and subtle changes in colour that depict shadows and highlights. But this book offers more than just pictures. Two chapters include extensive reminiscences in community members’ own words, while profiles of the artists and the weavers (the oldest of whom lived from 1908 to 1996) give us a picture of both traditional and modern Inuit life.