Contemporary Inuk artist Shuvinai Ashoona’s fantastical hand-coloured etchings, her dream-like imagery, and her distinctive environmental focus have made her internationally renowned. This summer-fall her works are in three major exhibitions, one of them in the UK. (See a previous feature about Shuvinai Ashoona, here)
Her sea creatures are part of the Marion Scott Gallery’s exhibition Iconic: Saimaiyu Akesuk, Shuvinai Ashoona and Jamasee Pitseolak (here). It’s a celebration of the Vancouver gallery’s 50th year, with these three famed Nunavut artists front and centre. (Below: more of Shuvinai Ashoona’s works at Marion Scott)
Tangled Up, 2023, 8/10
Etching and Hand Colouring
The sculptures of Jamasee Pitseolak have been featured on the Art Junkie before (here). For a briefing on Saimaiyu Akesuk, read about her collaboration with Canada Goose where she gets her inspiration (here).
Ashoona is also part of the McMichael Canadian Collection exhibition, Worlds on Paper: Drawings from Kinngait. There is special focus on one of her works, called Composition (Hands Drawing), 2014, lent for the show by actors Martha Burns and Paul Gross. (See it at Art Canada Institute, here).
The work above is the banner image for a group exhibition called Sea Inside. The show examines humanity’s interconnections, interrelationships, and immersion in oceans, through early October, 2025 at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich, U.K.
That work (At The Dentist) was part of the artist’s first solo exhibition in the United Kingdom (above). Titled Shuvinai Ashoona, When I Draw, it ran at The Perimeter, London, January to April, 2024.
The work interweaves scenes from everyday Arctic life with imagery associated with Inuit animism and shamanism. This is the first time Ashoona’s works will be shown in Europe since receiving a Special Mention by the awards jury at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022, for her installation of six drawings in The Milk of Dreams. – The Perimeter, exhibition notes.
Shuvinai Ashoona at Dorset Fine Arts, here.
Image at the top of the post (full image below): Installation view of Shuvinai Ashoona: When I Draw at the Perimeter, London, 2024, showing, Untitled, by Shuvinai Ashoona. 2021. Graphite, coloured pencil and ink on paper, 128 by 249.5 cm. (Photograph, Stephen James).
Discover more from Canadian Art Junkie
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I’ll hightail it to the Marion Scott Gallery! thanks — I first saw Shuvinai Ashoona’s work in a 2020 show at the VAG (“Mapping Worlds”) and look forward to this trio of artists. Her fantastical work is very much hers, and very much now, but it does send my mind to the earlier fantastical work of Pudlo Pudlat, who also mixed the new realities of Arctic life with jokes and play, anchored in the land itself (e.g. a First Air plane being hauled through the sky on a komatik). Pitseolak,Ashoona, new generations of great names, not daunted by the legacy but making their own mark.
Thanks, I did not know Pudlo Pudlat, fascinating and obviously a kind of trailblazer. Enjoy the exhibition.
Oh, I’m glad you’ve looked him up!
💙