Northern Line: Drawings by Sheojuk Etidlooie

Over the course of an artistic career that lasted a little over five years, Kinngait-based drawer Sheojuk Etidlooie created a highly idiosyncratic body of abstract work that remains unique in the history of Inuit art. Opening July 21 and running through September 1, Northern Line: Drawings by Sheojuk Etidlooie brought several of the artist’s minimally rendered and often colourful drawings, most dating from the late 1990s.

From the very beginning, Etidlooie preferred to work in an abstract non-narrative style, producing strikingly spare images based on motifs taken from everyday northern life. Pails, stone lamps, traditional flotation devices and tents are among the objects that served as her subjects. Many of the most schematic works make use of aerial or
diagrammatic perspectives, in which the elements of a single object are typically splayed out before the viewer.
Various animals—caribou, fish, whales and birds—also appear frequently, their forms rendered in a similarly mysterious or fantastical manner.