TORONTO — Mythical creatures, fishing scenes, machinery, giant squid and quiet streets collide in the detailed drawings of acclaimed Inuk artist Shuvinai Ashoona. Inspired by daily life in Nunavut, her distinctive landscapes reflect a place where the everyday is imbued with otherworldly beings, spirits and unseen forces.
In 2018, Ashoona was named winner of the Gershon Iskowitz Prize at the AGO, an annual award for artists who have made an exceptional contribution to the visual arts in Canada, which is accompanied by a solo exhibition. Launching this summer when the AGO re-opens to the public, Shuvinai Ashoona: Beyond the Visiblewill present 25 new and recent works on paper.
Ahead of the exhibition, Ashoona joins Wanda Nanibush, the AGO’s Curator of Indigenous Art, in conversation on June 24 at 1 p.m. For more information and to register for this free Zoom talk, visithttps://ago.ca/events/art-spotlight-shuvinai-ashoona.
A third-generation Inuk artist, Ashoona is based in Kinngait, Nunavut and works daily at Kinngait Studios, where she been a major force in the emergence of its contemporary drawing practice. In her recent works, she merges ink, graphite and colour pencil to create large-scale works in both vertical and horizontal formats. Curiosity(2020), a drawing acquired by the AGO at Art Toronto 2020, measures an astonishing 268 centimeters (8.7 feet) wide. Offering a bird’s-eye-view of her hometown, amongst the many buildings and roads depicted is a portrait of an Inuk family, a walrus, several seals and the curious tentacles of seven giant pastel monsters.
“I seem to start without exactly thinking of what I’m going to draw,” says Ashoona. “The pencil seems to say, ‘Hey, come on, catch me and do this part,’ or something like that. ‘Hey, look at this one – do that part for me, please?”
According to exhibition curator Wanda Nanibush, “Ashoona’s extraordinary imagination imbues her portraits of everyday life with the otherworldly. The descendant of a deep artistic legacy, her work is incredibly contemporary, bringing to the fore the joy of transformation and the unexpected. She sees beyond what is visible in her environment.”
To complement the exhibition, Ashoona’s recent work Making a Movie, will be on view in The J. S. McLean Centre for Indigenous & Canadian Art when the AGO re-opens to the public. And in late October, the large-scale pencil crayon drawing Composition (Leaf Boat), 2008-2009, a promised gift to the Gallery, will go on view.
Shuvinai Ashoona: Beyond the Visible is free for AGO Members, AGO Annual Pass holders and visitors aged 25 and under. Stay tuned for more information about the Gallery public re-opening.