Artist Bio

Inupiaq Eskimo artist Aakatchaq (Ak-ah-chak) is Kikiktagrukmiut, born and raised above the Arctic Circle 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 deerskins, 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 remodeled high school in the Northwest Arctic Borough in Northwest Alaska.

Her art began with acrylic paintings and has evolved from canvas to caribou & sealskin, to aluminum and wood pieces. She began carving walrus ivory tusks with exotic hardwood and more recently she began creating her caribou skin masks. All art inquiries can be directed to: aakatchaq@gmail.com

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 tattoos of beauty

and adornments 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.