Shuvinai Ashoona
By turns uncanny, comical and disquieting, Shuvinai Ashoona’s idiosyncratic dream-like imagery erases the distinctions between the natural and spirit worlds, and between the real and imagined. Many of the artist’s images include fantastical monster-like creatures, while others portray people and planets orbited by a range of beings including fish and walruses. Ashoona’s drawings of tents and wooden structures positioned on rock strewn landscapes often provide glimpses of their interiors, transforming what might otherwise be mistaken for images belonging to ethnographic illustration into uncanny meditations on the fluid boundary between inside and outside. Known for her aerial perspectives and cropped compositions, Ashoona’s carefully executed drawings and prints are often marked by a filmic sensibility.
The daughter of the well-known sculptor Kiawak Ashoona and granddaughter of the late Pitseolak Ashoona, the great graphic artist, Shuvinai Ashoona was born in 1961 in Cape Dorset on Baffin Island. Her own career started in the mid-1990s when she began making drawings for the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative. Often startlingly different from other Cape Dorset graphic expression, Ashoona’s reputation as a contemporary Canadian artist has steadily grown over the years. Her works are included in several prominent institutional collections, including the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Gallery Exhibitions
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Publications
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Shuvinai Ashoona’s Solo Exhibition at The Perimeter: “When I Draw”
The Perimeter, a contemporary art exhibition space in London, England announced its first show...
Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory and Taqralik Partridge at the Canadian Centre for Architecture
Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory and Taqralik Partridge are featured in Towards Home, on view at Montreal’s Canadian Centre for...
Shuvinai Ashoona at the Vancouver Art Gallery
In her first institutional exhibition on the West Coast, Shuvinai Ashoona: Mapping Worlds brings...
Shuvinai Ashoona at the Power Plant
Shuvinai Ashoona is featured in a solo exhibition at The Power Plant in Toronto....
Shuvinai Ashoona with John Noestheden at the 18th Biennale of Sydney
Shuvinai Ashoona’s and John Noestheden’s collaborative work John Noestheden: Sky & Shuvinai Ashoona: Earth,...
Shuvinai Ashoona with John Noestheden at the MacKenzie Art Gallery
Shuvinai Ashoona is featured alongside John Noestheden in John Noestheden: Sky & Shuvinai Ashoona:...
Shuvinai Ashoona at the Massachussets Museum of Contemporary Art
Shuvinai Ashoona is just one of 60 Canadian contemporary artists featured in Oh Canada...
Tony Anguhalluq, Shuvinai Ashoona, Itee Pootoogook, Kananginak Pootoogook, Nick Sikkuark and Oviloo Tunnillie in Inuit Modern at the Art Gallery of Ontario
Works by Tony Anguhalluq, Shuvinai Ashoona, Itee Pootoogook, Kananginak Pootoogook, Nick Sikkuark and Oviloo...
Shuvinai Ashoona at the Winnipeg Art Gallery
A selection of drawings and prints by Shuvinai Ashoona, together with images by Pudlo...
Shuvinai Ashoona at the National Gallery of Canada
Shuvinai Ashoona will be featured in It Is What It Is, a special exhibition...
Shuvinai Ashoona, Qavavau Manumie in The Drawing Room
Works by Shuvinai Ashoona and Qavavau Manumie are included in The Drawing Room, a...
