Shuvinai Ashoona, Qavavau Manumie, Kananginak Pootoogook: Hommage to three artists from Kinngait

 The gallery Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain  is honored to present, in collaboration with the Dorset Fine Arts/West Baffin Eskimo Co-Operative, a selection of drawings by three Kinngait artists who are present on the international art biennial scene: Shuvinai Ashoona who is currently participating in the Venice Biennale, Qavavau Manunie who exhibited earlier this year in Australia at the Sydney Biennale and Kananginak Pootoogook who exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2017. In collaboration with VTape, the gallery's video room features Marcia Connolly's "Ghost noise," a moving portrait on Shuvinai Ashoona made in 2010.

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Shuvinai Ashoona (b. 1961) began drawing in the early 1990s. Although she never received formal training, Ashoona's family and Kinngait Studios in Cape Dorset provided her with a creative atmosphere. Her grandmother is the renowned artist Pitseolak Ashoona and her father is the sculptor Kiawak Ashoona.

Her work explores a new dynamism through compositions that depict human figures and other creatures with cleverly concealed imagery, and uses a broad spectrum of colors. The evolution of Ashoona's artistic style demonstrates a highly developed artistic sensibility. Her creatures, animals and monsters, often unusual and imaginative evolve with both elements of her community environment and the personal world of her own imagination.

Represented in numerous group and solo exhibitions in Canada, her work has been included in several international exhibitions, such as Venice Biennale (2022), Sydney Biennale (2012), Oh, Canada (2012) at the Massachusetts Museum of Art, . She is included in many collections of major art institutions, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, BMO Financial Group, Canada Council Art Bank, Canadian Museum of Civilization, Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, MacKenzie Art Gallery, National Gallery of Canada, TD Bank Group, the Winnipeg Art Gallery and many more.

Shuvinai Ashoona was awarded the Gershon Iskowitz Prize in 2018 et received a Special Mention Award for her work at the Venice Biennale 2022.

"When I start drawing, I remember things I have experienced or seen. Although I don't try to recreate those images exactly, that's what might happen. Sometimes they are more realistic, but sometimes they turn out completely different. That's what happens when I draw." -Shuvinai Ashoona (From "Ghost Noise"; produced and directed by Marcia Connolly, 2010)

The New York Times published an extensive profile on Shuvinai Ashoona this June and on the exceptional artistic scene of Kinngait.

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Qavavau Manumie was born in Brandon, Manitoba in 1958, where his mother, Paunichea, was hospitalized for treatment of tuberculosis. He returned to Cape Dorset at a young age and has lived there ever since. Over the years, Qavavau has demonstrated a wide range of stylistic abilities, from the literal to the expressive. His work is idiosyncratic and often amusing in its depictions of Inuit legends and mythology, Arctic wildlife and contemporary aspects of Inuit life. Qavavau is part of the second generation of Inuit artists to receive critical acclaim in the contemporary art world, and his international reputation is being established these days as evidenced by his participation in this year's Sydney Biennale in Australia and at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw in 2020.

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Kananginak Pootoogook, RCA was born in 1935 at Ikirasaq, NU, a small hunting camp on southern Baffin Island. Son of the well-respected camp leader Josephie Pootoogook, Kananginak grew up in a traditional Inuit family and was raised to be a hunter and trapper. Inuit values, beliefs and ways of life hence become important themes in his art. In the late 1950s he settled in Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU and quickly became known for his drawings and prints through the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative (WEBC) print program.

Pootoogook became the first spokesperson of the WBEC and eventually became president of the Board of Directors. He believed printmaking and the graphic arts program in Kinngait provided opportunities for Inuit to create and establish new economic opportunities; Pootoogook was dedicated to making the program part of his community Through the print program, Pootoogook learned to create engravings and lithographs, how to translate an artist's drawing into prints and became one of the four original printers of the studio. From 1959 onwards, a selection of his prints were included in all but three annual catalogued collections.  Besides excelling as a printmaker, he created vivid, documentary-style drawings. His drawings are a lens through which viewers can see both positive and negative cultural changes in his community. Pootoogook used humour and subtlety to highlight the incongruous in the everyday and small, magical moments in nature.

His creations have been exhibited in many major galleries and museums around the world and are a part of numerous collections. Most recently, his work was included in the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. Pootoogook was the first Inuit artist to have work included in the international exhibition.

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