Reviewed by Robin Laurence
Eight Women is a rich and resonant exhibition, presenting sculptures, prints, drawings, and a small textile work by some remarkable northern artists. While many commercial galleries respond to the slow summer season by hanging uncurated group shows from their whole stable, the Marion Scott Gallery has chosen to focus on the accomplishments of a particular few—and to consider the charged question of gender.
On view are works by Kenojuak Ashevak, Mary Ayaq, Sheojuk Etidlooie, Elisapee Ishulutaq, Miriam Qiyuk, Nicotye Samayualie, Oviloo Tunnillie, and Lucy Tasseor, essentially representing three distinct generations of art production in the North. Researched and organized by Robert Kardosh, the show celebrates the important role women have played in the evolution of modern Inuit art. It also acknowledges the long-standing commitment of his mother, gallery director Judy Kardosh, to the work of indigenous women.
In his curatorial essay, Robert Kardosh describes the thematic continuities that unite these artists’ otherwise diverse practices. Their subjects include family and domestic life, he observes, along with “women’s work” such as food preparation, scraping and drying animal skins, and making clothing. It’s interesting that women artists are drawn to subjects dictated by traditional gender roles, yet are not inhibited by gender proscriptions when it comes to carving in stone, a medium more often associated with men in the North.
