Vancouver Rivers by Shuvinai Ashoona

In conjunction with our current exhibition showcasing the artist’s drawings and sculptures, Marion Scott Gallery is pleased to present a new print edition by Kinngait’s Shuvinai Ashoona. Produced in collaboration with New Leaf Editions, the large-format etching, entitled Vancouver Rivers, memorializes the artist’s month-long residency in Vancouver in 2022.

In Ashoona’s finely-detailed cropped image, the artist returns to one of her most familiar themes: the picture within a picture. The main, or outer, image depicts a figure whose features we cannot see holding up a large drawing. Presumably this is the artist herself, showing us a recently completed drawing. Within the angled picture are additional figures holding up their drawings in a kind of show-and-tell. On the right, a woman with a child in her parka hood presents a portrait of a figure with mask-like features gripping what might be a steering wheel. Next to this, a group of four people in winter parkas hold up a drawing picturing two figures with fantastical heads. On the composition’s left side, a figure in high-heeled shoes, whose body is a formation of globes stacked one on top of the other, shows off a drawing in which three people show us two additional drawings. Ashoona’s additions of text forge connections between her Baffin Island home and her temporary residence on Canada’s west coast. While not quite a representation of an infinity of worlds enfolded within other worlds, Ashoona’s complexly layered image says something important about the nature of artistic representation, even as it brings into focus her singular vision of fantasy intertwined with the everyday.