Janet Nungnik

Based on childhood memories of living on the land, the clarity of Janet Nungnik’s cut out forms gives her complex sewn works an expressive power and graphic immediacy. At the same time, the often dream-like images are filled with a range of delicate details that enrich their meaning, the embroidered and beaded surfaces attaining a tactile presence. Nungnik accompanies the majority of her images with lines of verse-like text in English. These textual additions serve less as explanations of the imagery and more as parallel expressions of her sensibility and thought.

Nungnik was born in 1954 at a small camp west of Hudson Bay in what used to be known as the Barrenlands. A member of the inland dwelling Padlermiut and Ihalmiut, she grew up learning the traditions and practices of her people. For the first several years of her life, she believed that her immediate family members were the only people in existence. When she was 6 or 7, white administrators from southern Canada arrived by plane to take her away for schooling in Baker Lake. In the early 1970s, Nungnik began making wallhangings, learning her craft by watching the legendary textile artist Jessie Oonark at work.