The landscape outside an Apex window in Iqaluit is now travelling across Canada on an everyday household item: tissue boxes. A local multi-media artist working under the pen name Yurak has two wraparound illustrations featured in Royale’s new Canadian Artist Collection, a limited-edition series that asked artists from across the country to depict "The View From Here."
From Iqaluit’s horizon to living rooms nationwide
One of the designs, called Brilliance Beyond the Horizon, captures frozen stretches and the waters of Frobisher Bay, the scene visible from the artist’s home in Apex village just outside Iqaluit. The other design — titled Tuktuliak, the Inuktitut word for caribou hunting — depicts the artist’s memories of hunting with family.
Rather than creating two separate panels, the artist produced a single wraparound illustration that unfolds across the box surfaces. The artwork blends landscape, seasonal plants and cultural motifs such as tattoos and beadwork.
“I think that’s the lovely thing about this campaign, is that they want to show that Canada is so vast and we’re a very multicultural country,”
The artist said they used the project as a way to show what home means in Nunavut — not only everyday life but also the aspirations, craft and food traditions that define Inuit experience. The flip side of the landscape box shows fireweed, purple saxifrage — Nunavut’s territorial flower — Arctic heather and berries and other harvested plants. The inclusion of cultural tattoos and beadwork was intentional, the artist said, to represent the skills Nunavummiut share with the rest of Canada.
Local perspective and cultural visibility
For residents of Iqaluit and surrounding communities, the series marks another example of Nunavut imagery appearing in national commercial products. The Royale collection includes eight limited-edition boxes featuring designs by five Canadian artists. The campaign’s theme encouraged artists to reflect on their sense of home and to share that perspective with a broad audience.
Locally, the images are familiar: coastal ice and bay waters, tundra flora and the long history of hunting and family-based food harvesting. For many, seeing these elements on a mass-produced consumer item carries mixed implications — pride in cultural visibility for Nunavummiut alongside questions about how Indigenous imagery is presented and commercialized outside its communities. The artist’s choice to include both landscape and cultural craft elements attempts to balance scenery with meaningful cultural signifiers.
- Artist: Yurak (pen name of Siku Rojas)
- Collection: Royale’s Canadian Artist Collection — limited edition
- Designs: Brilliance Beyond the Horizon (Frobisher Bay landscape); Tuktuliak (caribou hunt)
Design details and distribution
According to the artist, the project was commissioned last winter by a public relations agency working with Royale and the artworks were completed before January. The pieces are now printed on the household brand’s tissue boxes and available to consumers where Royale products are sold.
| Design name | Main elements |
|---|---|
| Brilliance Beyond the Horizon | Frozen landscape, Frobisher Bay, harvest plants, purple saxifrage |
| Tuktuliak | Caribou hunting scene, family hunting memories |
For an artist living in Iqaluit, having images of the Arctic printed on everyday household goods offers an opportunity to open conversations about place, culture and the work that Nunavummiut contribute to Canada. The project also underscores how small, local views can be reframed for a national audience — in this case, across dinner tables and living rooms in communities far from the Arctic.
As the boxes enter store aisles, people in Iqaluit and beyond may notice familiar tundra flowers or the hint of a caribou hunt on a product they use daily. That exchange — of local knowledge and aesthetic across geographic distance — is precisely what the artist said the campaign hoped to accomplish.
