Aija Komangapik

Aija Komangapik is a visual artist who works primarily in digital media but also loves to paint and draw with anything she has on hand. Komangapik was born and raised in Iqaluit, NU until she moved to Gaspé, QC where she attended Cégep. Komangapik is currently attending Bishop’s University studying Arts Administration.

The artist comes from a creative family and happily recounts that her father, renowned artist Ruben Komangapik, is her self-proclaimed biggest fan. Growing up exposed to Inuit art has influenced Komangapik, but she brings her own flair to her piece with fantastic use of bold and bright primary colours. She reminisced about her first “sale” in an interview with Inuit Art Foundation staff, when she was in kindergarten she chose her three favourite coloured pencils and coloured a drum dancer colouring page in class and her teacher liked it so much she traded her a stuffed kangaroo toy for the picture. Making that first “sale” gave her confidence in her craft early on. [1]

At the age of twenty, Komangapik already has an award, an illustrated book, and was the designer for the Canadian Indigenous History Month emoji for Twitter. She won the 2019 Indigenous Arts and Stories contest from Historica Canada for her piece “Drum Dancer”, a digital image that showcases her fluid style and bright colourful choices. She also illustrated the 2019 book Country Food published by Inhabit Media.

Komangapik’s work brings a new kind of life to traditional images using bright, eye catching colour combinations to depict joyous traditional hunters, drum dancers and even smiling tupiait and skeletons clad in traditional Inuit clothing. 




This Profile was made possible through support from the RBC Foundation’s Emerging Artists Project.