Niap

Niap is a multidisciplinary Inuk artist celebrated for her drawings, murals, sculptures, and paintings. She was born in Kuujjuaq, Nunavik (Northern Quebec), the oldest daughter of a Quebecer father and an Inuk mother. 

Niap’s fascination with the arts began at a very young age. While her family was out hunting and fishing, she spent her time exploring various artistic mediums. Her mother, who enjoyed oil painting and interior decoration, served as an early artistic model and inspiration.

Niap was highly imaginative as a young girl. She paid close attention to the details of daily life, and the stories all around her. Even everyday tasks could be approached as art projects. But in a small northern village like Kuujjuaq, there were no opportunities to take formal art classes. Niap also remembers asking for a piano for Christmas one year, but, again, opportunities in the north were limited. Very early, she began drawing what she saw around her: here was one art form that was accessible! Observation drawing became one of her favourite mediums.

In the 1990s, Niap’s family moved away from Kuujjuaq, to a rural community much further south called Saint-Lin-Laurentides. It was a challenging period in her young life. In this rural setting, Niap suffered discrimination. No one there understood Inuit culture. At school, she was regularly bullied, which instilled a sense of shame about her culture and the feeling that it was something best kept hidden from others. For example, when she invited friends over, she didn’t want her mother to serve them caribou or beluga meat. She refused to speak her native language, and preferred store-bought clothing to what her grandmother made.

When she was 18, Niap met other Inuit from Nunavut in Ottawa, and became aware of something that had been missing in her life. In Ottawa she found a community that practiced throat singing and openly discussed their culture and identity with a sense of pride she had never known.

In 2005, Niap took part in a march to raise awareness about the issues facing Indigenous communities. It changed her life. She walked across Canada, from Vancouver to Ottawa, with a group of like-minded young Indigenous people. For the first time in her life, Niap felt a sense of belonging. This much-needed journey brought about a spiritual awakening that led her to re-evaluate the most difficult moments of her adolescence, when she was trying to figure out who she really was.

Niap went back to her grandmother’s home in Kuujjuaq to relearn her language and reclaim her Inuit culture and identity. Since then, she has worked to share this identity with the rest of the world, and help it live on and flourish. She has also relearned certain ancestral techniques and ways of life. It was during this return to her homeland that her career as an artist began in earnest, shaped by the influences of her community. To this day, Niap practices Inuit throat singing, the first art form to be designated an official intangible heritage of Quebec.

Among Niap’s important artworks is a 2018 installation entitled ᑲᑕᔾᔭᐅᓯᕙᓪᓛᑦ Katajjausivallaat, le rythme bercé, which is now in the collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. In 2017, a drawing by Niap was chosen by the Canadian Museum of Nature, who asked her to recreate it as a large-scale permanent mural for its Arctic Gallery. She also plays an Inuk character in the 2020 Quebec television series Epidemic. Every day, Niap continues to promote the strength and beauty of her culture, so that young and old alike can learn to celebrate difference.

“When life is hard, remember that it won’t last forever,” she likes to say. “You have to persevere. At some point, you’ll find yourself, and that will empower you to choose your own path.”