Laakuluk Williamson Bathory

Laakkuluk Williamson or Laakkuluk, is a Kalaaleq (Greenlandic Inuk) performance artist, spoken word poet, actor, storyteller and writer based in Iqaluit, Nunavut. She is known for performing , a Greenlandic mask dance that involves storytelling and centers three elements: fear, humour and sexuality. Williamson describes as both a political and cultural act and an idiosyncratic art form.

Biography Born and raised in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Williamson is of Inuk and British ancestry. Her mother, Karla Williamson, was one of the original recreators of in the 1970s Greenlandic folk movement after the dance form was nearly eradicated by colonial missionaries in Greenland in the 18th–20th centuries.

Career

Artistic practice Williamson has been active in the Inuit, Indigenous, and Canadian art scenes since the 1990s and describes as the cornerstone of her artistic practice. In the film, Williamson works to dismantle stereotypes of the "Pocahottie" and speaks back against consistent sexual violence perpetrated against Indigenous women.

Williamson frequently collaborates with Inuk throat singer and recording artist Tanya Tagaq, including an appearance in Tagaq's 2016 music video for "Retribution" and a 2015 co-performance for #callresponse. The pair also performed together in March 2018 as part of the Beyond Worlds series presented by the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. Of her experiences working with Tagaq, Williamson said in 2018: "Once we started performing together, we realized how much we sink and fly through the same realms of consciousness to create performance – her through her voice and me through my mask dancing. It is an incredible experience to perform together: we are unique from one another and heighten one another at the same time." Qaggiavuut! Society has been operating as a volunteer organization since 2009, and in January 2016 won the Arctic Inspiration Prize – the first time an arts-based organization has ever won the prize. Beyond its goal of creating a Nunavut performing arts space, the organization also works to expand performing arts training for Inuit artists, to build economic opportunities for artists in the Arctic, to maintain at-risk Inuit performance art forms, and to nurture the creation of new Inuit performing arts work. Williamson began working as a program manager for the Qaggiavuut! Society in 2016.

Performance works Tulugak: Inuit Raven Stories, with Sylvia Cloutier, 2013 Retribution, with Tanya Tagaq, 2016 Kiviuq Returns, with Qaggiavuut! Society for a Nunavut Performing Arts Centre, 2017 Visions and Dreams—Northern Light, CBC, VTPL, 2003 Timiga Nunalu, Sikulu (film), for #callresponse, grunt gallery, 2016

Curation Ilitarivingaa? exhibit, Art Gallery of Ontario, 2004 Inuit Art in Motion exhibit, with Anna Hudson, Art Gallery of Ontario, 2003

Written works "Talluriutiup Tariunga"—Oceans North Canada, 2015 "How Akutaq Came to Be"—Pith and Wry, 2011 "Aqausiit: Can You Hear How Much Love You Evoke In Me?!"—Native Studies Review 20(2), 2011 "Inuit gender parity and why it was not accepted in the Nunavut legislature"—Études huit 30(1), 2006