This year’s two Greenlandic stamps issued in PostEurop’s annual EUROPA series are based on the common theme ‘Stories and Myths’. The task of illustrating the stamps fell to Aka Høegh, one of Greenland’s most significant living artists. Concerning her two stamps, she says:
“The first stamp symbolises Inuit narratives in a broader sense. I have drawn two mask-like faces to represent that our stories are told and passed on. The book is open to let the stories come out. In creating the design, I cut from an old history book with old orthography, as a form of talking flower that grows.
The second stamp depicts a myth about the children between the willow twigs. After Earth came into being, humans appeared. It is said that the little children came forth out of the earth between the willow bushes, covered in willow leaves. Then they lay there with their eyes closed, between the bushes, squirming. Then the children crawled around and ate of willow twigs and of the soil. This is an Inuit narrative of the genesis of man.”
About the artist
Aka Høegh was born on 16th December 1947 in the mining town of Qullissat. In 1976 she married the Latvian artist, writer and photographer Ivars Silis (born 1940). The couple have two children, who are also both artists: Inuk Silis Høegh (born 1972) and Bolatta Silis-Høegh (born 1981).
Aka Høegh became interested in art at an early age through her parents. The legendary Jens Rosing encouraged this early interest, lending her professional drawing tools already when she was a child. Later,
she trained under the renowned writer Hans Lynge, who was also an active sculptor and painter. After attending school in Qullissat and the high school in Aasiaat, she wrote in 1967 to the Greenland Ministry, in the hope of attaining a scholarship for a professional art education, which she herself could not afford as she came from a family without the necessary funds. She received the answer that she should rather train as a nurse, which she duly started in Copenhagen. However, after a short time she gave up her study.
She then studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen under the tutelage of, among others, Robert Jacobsen. In the early 1970s, she attended the art school in Nuuk, where she taught from 1973 to 1976.
Her art at that time became an important vehicle for the preservation of Greenlandic identity. It consisted primarily of natural elements and achieved notoriety in Denmark through Bodil Kaalund (1930 – 2016). She was part of the art societies Ex Dania and Arte por la Vida. In addition to Denmark and Greenland, her art has also been exhibited in Germany, the Faroe Islands, the Netherlands, Israel, Alaska, Mexico, Bolivia, Ice- land, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania.
Aka Høegh is largely self-taught, but she studied for periods at the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, where, at the Academy’s sculpture school (including spatial and mural art) she was taught by Ole Chris- tensen and Svend Wiig Hansen among others. In an effort to formulate a Greenlandic identity, art became an important tool in which Aka during the early 1970s tried to depict the Greenlandic soul through myths and legends. In addition to paintings and sculptures, Aka Høegh has produced illustrations for books, including a posthumous edition of Knud Rasmussen’s trilogy ‘Inuit Folk-Tales’.
These two stamps are Aka Høegh’s 24th and 25th for Tusass Greenland since her stamp debut in 1985.
