Ivínguak’ Stork Høegh

Artist Spotlight:Worlds collide in vivid colour in works by Kalaaleq artist and graphic designer Ivínguak’ Stork Høegh.

ᓴᖅᑭᑎᑦᑎᓂᖅ ᑭᒡᒐᖅᑐᐃᔩᑦ ᒐᕙᒪᓕᕆᔨᓂᒃ ᖃᐅᔨᑎᑦᑎᔩᑦ
A digital photo collage shows a figure from behind, driving a sled in an arctic landscape. Instead of dogs pulling the sled, five zebras are pictured.

Artist and graphic designer Ivínguak’ Stork Høegh’s work combines eclectic elements of street art, pop culture, found imagery and a bold graphic sensibility, bringing vivid prismatic colour and Kalaallit stories to her vibrant collage work. Part of a family of artists, musicians, and cultural leaders spread across Kalaallit Nunaat and Denmark, Høegh was trained at the Aarhus Kunstakademi, Denmark as a graphic and media artist. She is now based in Nuuk. 

A digital photo collage shows a figure from behind, driving a sled in an arctic landscape. Instead of dogs pulling the sled, five zebras are pictured.
Ivínguak’ Stork Høegh, Qimusseq (Zebra Sledge), 2021. COURTESY THE ARTIST.

Her design work has been featured on stamps such as the 2021 World Oceans Day Greenland stamp, and the first scented Christmas stamp in 2018, as well as book illustrations, card designs, and more.

For her 2016 exhibition at the Nuuk Art Museum, My Home—My Society Høegh used photography and collage to create layered images, using her own photographs of local people, architecture, and highly-detailed images of paint peeling from walls to depict the city of Nuuk and contemporary Kalaallit culture against the backdrop of globalization. Tackling issues such as addiction, care, and nationalism, the series borrows the aesthetics of street art and graffiti but with a soft, ethereal quality.

A digital photo collage shows an Inuk child and parent at the beach, with a pile of beach toys and a kayak. The figures are in muted tones, while the tropical landscape surrounding them is vibrant, with palm trees and a brilliant blue sky.
Ivínguak’ Stork Høegh, Beach tour, 2020. COURTESY THE ARTIST.

Ongoing since 2013, her series of works Arctic Exotic explores notions of exoticism, juxtaposing images of life in Kalaallit Nunaat with people, animals and landscapes from tropical locations to reveal the complexities bound up in a fascination with and desire for the “exotic.” While the images are playful and vivid, they also reveal colonialism’s role in producing images of “exotic” people and places—from 19th century images of Kalaallit to images of safari animals, the capture of photographs by Europeans was part of a colonial process of conquest, exploration, expansion and exploitation. Rather than a pointed critique, Hoegh’s work offers a kind of questioning through hybridity, fusion and melding—examining the meeting points between cultures and the fractured lenses through which we encounter each other and the world.