This exhibit unites the work of three Inuit artists from Kinngait, Nunavut. Shuvinai Ashoona's recent drawings, alongside pieces by Napachie Pootoogook and Samonie Toonoo, reveal a recurring motif: the hand. This tangible symbol extends from the artists' own creative processes of drawing and sculpting, becoming a conduit for storytelling, preservation, and the creation of new worlds.
Samonie Toonoo's sculptures capture figures in moments of flux and transformation, blending Inuit folklore, religion, and pop culture in a haunting and alluring synthesis. Crafted from veined serpentinite and adorned with faces intricately carved from polished antler, his figures are suffused with an interplay of light and dark elements. Raised hands and emotional, contorted faces embedded within wandering figures manifest the link between people and spirits.
Napachie Pootogook's drawings center around storytelling, oral history, and the depiction of personal and communal narratives, with a particular focus on women's experiences. Her extensive body of work prominently features Inuit spirituality, folklore, clothing, and traditional life. In her final years, she shifted towards autobiographical drawings, documenting memories and real-life community events. This transition transformed her into a local oral historian, preserving stories for future generations. Her art unflinchingly addresses challenging aspects of childhood and everyday life in Kinngait, tackling subjects like abuse, alcoholism, and starvation.
Shuvinai Ashoona's recent series of five drawings explores childhood themes. Across her artistic repertoire, scenes of daily life, Arctic landscapes, and nature intertwine with pop culture, hybrid creatures, Inuit legends, and folklore. Rich in psychological depth, imaginative intricacies, and expressive qualities, Shuvinai's works immerse viewers in a realm steeped in personal mythology. The hand symbol emerges subtly throughout, depicting hands carrying boxes and groceries, operating a skidoo, pricked by sewing needles, and even a hand descending from the sky, emitting radiant golden light with multiple Earth-like planets resting on its fingertips. Children gather on the back of a skidoo, sipping milk from bottles, and snuggling close to an enigmatic creature with a lengthy tail ending in two hand-like fins, a solitary antler, and a draped braid of hair over its shoulder.
Hands, the body, and childhood emerge as pivotal motifs, uniting the creative output of these three artists. Their works explore the intricate connection between the physical and spiritual realms, shedding light on both the joys and challenges of everyday life.
Bios of the artists:
Samonie (Sam) Toonoo (1969 – 2017) was a carver from Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU. Toonoo is known for contrasting light and dark elements within his sculpture to visualize the connections between people and spirits and themes of death, religion, pop culture and technology.
Toonoo began carving in his early twenties, focusing on realistic depictions of Arctic wildlife and traditional Inuit activities. As his artistic practice developed, Toonoo began incorporating more human figures alongside text and abstract elements. Though he stated that he preferred working with bone, his ability to combine materials resulted in dramatic effects. His artistic hallmark is the contrast of figures sculpted from dark, veined serpentinite inset with polished antler carved into angular, deeply contoured faces. He often depicted spirits escaping from and entering the bodies of his figures, visualizing a connection between the physical and the spiritual. Toonoo’s spirits are not ethereal conceptions but physical manifestations that pierce, protrude from and suspend individuals.
Toonoo’s talent is acknowledged within the artistic community. Though initially not widely exhibited, his work continues to gain momentum among Southern audiences. The 2010 exhibition Scream: Ed Pien and Samonie Toonoo, held at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery in Toronto, was met with critical success. Toonoo has been profiled multiple times by the Inuit Art Quarterly.
Napachie Pootoogook was born in 1938, Sako Island Camp, NT, Canada, and died in 2002 in Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, Canada)
“In Napachie's autobiographical drawings, the perspective is so intensely personal that there is a sense of culture within a culture - a female world of supporting and, at times, surviving men. There are happy times of working together and playing together while the men are away hunting. There are difficult times of enduring social mores that often did not allow control over such intimate functions as marriage and childbearing. Although the suffering is lonely and frequent, there is also the mitigating factor of the wider community that often gives comfort or intervenes. The drawings show a vivid picture of Napachie's life through the syllabic inscriptions, but even more powerfully, through the details, the compositions and the expression of emotion in her work.
The drawings are filled with details that give realistic portrait of the culture of the Inuit south of Baffin Island, or the Sikusilaarmiuit: the clothing, hairstyles, and tools. We do not see the hunt for live animals - the male preoccupation - but we see the resulting skins that women made into clothing."
– Darlene Coward Wight, "Beyond Narrative" in "Napachie Pootoogook" published by the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 2004.
Often incorporating syllabic text into her work, below are translations:
Composition (Abused child receives)
“Asking for help through prayers
prayer went ahead, other one,
thinking to get help, God is reaching out
and Alcohol is on the way”
Untitled
"This is Kautjatjuk, who was mistreated and had torn clothing. Even his nostrils were stretched from having been lifted with fingers inserted into them. The only person who loved Kautjatjuk is giving him a tiny knife, so that he'll be able to cut meat with it"
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.
Over the years, Ashoona developed a distinct iconography of fantastical elements from her imagination that she incorporates in her depictions of contemporary Inuit life, historical events, and the northern landscape. Ashoona’s work is included in museum collections throughout Canada including Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario; Canadian Museum of History, Gatineau, Quebec; Inuit Art Center, Indian and Northern Affairs, Ottawa, Ontario; The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario; and the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg, Manitoba. In the United States, Ashoona’s work is represented in the permanent collections of Dennos Museum Center, Northwestern Michigan College, Traverse City, MI; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK; Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection, Boston, MA; National Museum of the American Indian, New York, NY; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA; and Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions including Shuvinai Ashoona: Drawings, Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; Shuvinai Ashoona: Beyond the Visible, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada; Shuvinai Ashoona: Mapping Worlds, a touring exhibition organized by the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto. Her work has been included in group exhibitions including Once a Myth, Becoming Real, 14th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, Republic of Korea, The Milk of Dreams, 59th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, and Three Women, Three Generations: Drawings by Pitseolak Ashoona, Napatchie Pootoogook and Shuvinai Ashoona at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, 18th Biennale of Sydney: All Our Relations” (2012), and “Oh, Canada” (2012) at Mass MoCA. Shuvinai Ashoona received the 2018 Gershon Iskowitz Prize which is awarded each year to recognize an individual’s contribution to Canadian art and one of two special mentions for the 59th Venice Biennale's Official Awards, alongside American artist Lynn Hershman Leeson. Her work was also included in Phaidon's 2013 catalogue, Vitamin D2: New Perspectives in Drawing, an international survey of contemporary drawing.
