In 1988, at the invitation of the Canadian Science Council, Stirling spent six months with an Inuit community on Igloolik in the Canadian Arctic - the island's first ever Artist in Residence. Using photography and recorded sound, she explored a community which, although it retained its distinctive character, had to cope with the changes taking place in its midst under western influence. Stirling's work offered a challenge to traditional European conceptions of the Inuit north.