Inupiaq artist Aakatchaq (Ak-ah-chak) is Kikiktagrukmiut, born and raised in Kotzebue, Alaska. Aakatchaq began creating art professionally in 1999 and continues to experiment with new materials such as moving from canvas portraits to those on stretched caribou and deerskin, or creating visual effects with caribou hair in paintings. More recently she began working with aluminum and wood whose sensual creations swim down the walls of the newly remodled high school in the Northwest Arctic Borough. These life-size pieces span 95 feet and displays a number of underwater creatures such as a 15' beluga alongside an 11' polar bear. More recently she began creating her unique style of caribou skin masks.
View art online at: http://eskimoart.blogspot.com http://www.myspace.com/aakatchaq
Artist Statement:
From the view of an Eskimo childhood
seen through the heads in the tundra
walking amidst the graves arose my ancestors
reborn. Focus of visions:
Eskimos walking atop frozen water
carrying the burden of a thousand years of living and dying upon their backs,
looking backwards into the eyes of a newborn,
remembering. The history of these deceased relatives
written upon their chins
in tatoos of beauty
and adnornments of ivory labrets. On this frozen land walks a people
beneath a blinding white horizon.
They utter to their children-to-come of this Inupiaq life,
a living memory;
spoken through stories, myths, carvings
and paint.