Exhibit
Kenojuak Ashevak
KENOJUAK ASHEVAK: LIFE AND LEGACY
AUGUST 5TH, 2023 to SEPTEMBER 30TH, 2023
ABOUT THE ARTIST
With a career spanning more than five decades, Cape Dorset Inuit artist Kenojuak Ashevak (1927–2013) was part a pioneering generation of Arctic creators. She enjoyed an illustrious international career and continues to be recognized as one of Canada’s preeminent Inuit artists and cultural icons. Since beginning to experiment with drawing in the 1950s, she produced a vast body of work, mainly utilizing graphite, coloured pencils and felt-tip pens on paper. Kenojuak approached her work with a strong creative intuition – her drawings emerged almost unconsciously, a process she would describe as her hand leading her mind. Her idiosyncratic style is easily recognizable, with archetypal drawings that capture images of birds, fish, bears and mystical figures; her aesthetic approach is perhaps the most recognizable of any Canadian artist.
Kenojuak’s work exudes a bright vibrant energy with a touch of whimsy, all wrapped in a pure wonder for the natural world. Nearly every Cape Dorset Annual Print Release since 1959 and until her death in 2013, has featured work by Kenojuak. Her images have been exhibited throughout Canada, United States, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Sweden, South Korea and Japan among other countries. Her work is in numerous public and private collections internationally.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
This project, first presented at the Kenojuak Cultural Centre in Cape Dorset, Nunavut, celebrates a lifetime of artistic practice, and is the largest survey of the Kenojuak Ashevak’s creative output ever generated by an organization based in the Canadian Arctic. This show comprises never-before-seen drawings, from the archives of the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative, that inspired some of Kenojuak’s most emblematic prints in stonecut, lithography, etching – the exhibition contains 31 drawings and three prints.
VIEW KENOJUAK ASHEVAK'S ONLINE CATALOGUE
