Landscape: Contemporary Inuit Drawings

Comprised of new and recent works on paper by four leading and emerging artists, Landscape demonstrates the diversity of Inuit approaches to the art of landscape, highlighting the growing importance of the natural environment as a source of artistic inspiration across the North.

The artists represent a range of generational and regional approaches. The eldest contributor to the exhibition, Rankin Inlet’s Mariano Aupilardjuk (an accomplished sculptor) creates sensuously coloured map-like images of the land— often peopled with silhouettes of tiny figures—that recall the cartographic and multi-perspective style of earlier times. Kugaaruk’s Nick Sikkuark was, like Aupilardjuk, a noted sculptor who recently made a full return to graphic art after a 30-year hiatus. The former carver employs a highly realistic style to produce naturalistic and fantastical landscapes. The works of Cape Dorset’s Shuvinai Ashoona are densely detailed and often psychologically dark. Alternating between atmospheric depictions of the outdoors and disturbing visions of subterranean valleys filled with strange formations, her images are both eerie and captivating. Baker Lake’s Tony
Anguhalluq reduces the forms of the landscape to near abstraction, combining a non-representational technique with compositional conventions