Jutai Toonoo
Jutai Felix Toonoo was born in 1959 near Cape Dorset (or Kinngait) on southern Baffin Island. Part of the first generation of Inuit to grow up in newly formed permanent settlements as opposed to seasonal camps, Toonoo first learned to carve by watching his father, Toonoo Toonoo, a respected hunter and stone sculptor. He started working professionally as an artist in the late 1990s, earning a reputation for figurative and semi abstract works in stone that bore little resemblance to traditional Inuit sculpture. In the early 2000s, Toonoo started working in various two-dimensional media, becoming one of the first artists in Cape Dorset to use the medium of oil sticks. Over the course of the next decade, he produced a powerfully original body of work on paper. In 2013, Toonoo’s work was featured in Sakahan, the National Gallery of Canada’s landmark exhibition of international indigenous art. His work in found in numerous prominent private and public collections, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Canadian Museum of History, the National Gallery of Canada and the Smithsonian. Jutai Toonoo was one of contemporary Inuit art’s most original voices. He died in 2015.
