Grace-Ann Nowdlak
All Genres and Mediums
Artist Story
Grace-Ann is an Inuk filmmaker working in storytelling, editing, and visual media born in Iqaluit, Nunavut and raised in Fort Simpson, Northwest Territories. After losing her biological mother, she travelled to Pangnirtung, Nunavut for the first time. That return restored her connection to family, language, and land. Her practice is guided by the legacy of her great-grandmother Malaya Akulukjuk, an Inuit artist and shaman, and by a commitment to Northern stories told from the inside.
She in love with film as a production assistant on Richard Van Camp’s feature Three Feathers, shot in Fort Smith and went on to study Television Production at SAIT in Calgary, Alberta. She then returned North and worked as a digital storytelling facilitator with Western Arctic Moving Pictures, travelling to communities across the NWT until COVID-19 ended the tour. In those workshops she taught recording and editing, and used shadow play, slideshows, and stop-motion so youth could shape their own messages.
Her short film Family is featured on Visible Vault at Qaumajuq, the Inuit art centre at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. The film looks more deeply into family and Inuit identity. After a period away from formal film work, she is returning to filmmaking, editing, and creating. She hopes to use her life experience to make honest films, and to help give women their voices back.
Artist Bio
Grace-Ann is an emerging Inuit filmmaker from the hamlet of Pangnirtung, Nunavut who was raised in Łíídlıı Kųę (Fort Simpson), located in the Dehcho region of the Northwest Territories.
She uses her digital storytelling as a way to explore her culture and families history, a topic in one of her short films which is on display at the Digital Vault in Qaumajuq, located in the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
