Recent Drawings by Ningiukulu Teevee

The Marion Scott Gallery is pleased to present Recent Drawings by Ningiukulu Teevee, an online showcase of recent works by one of northern Canada’s leading artists.

In this series of works, Teevee continues to explore her interest in pattern making and the fascinating relationship between abstraction and representation. Some of the images make reference to the natural world. In Dinnertime (2010), Teevee presents a walrus pictured at close range, the creature’s cropped massive form partially covered in a delicate pattern of seashells and clams. Another drawing, also from 2010, portrays a caribou licking salt from a stone at the shoreline; the rock’s surface is rendered as a dense pattern of sparkling dark and light contrasts.

Teevee is equally committed to portraying the contemporary side of northern life. Here we include two drawings belonging to this category. In Sell Out Crowd, a monochromatic drawing from 2010, the Inuit artist depicts a throng of people at a concert, a lone camera thrust above the sea of heads. A drawing from 2009, entitled Modern Inuit Woman, portrays a kneeling woman in jeans and a sleeveless summer top cutting raw meat with an ulu, a unique juxtaposition of traditional and modern elements that speaks to cultural hybridity in today’s North.

Born in 1963 in Kinngait and largely self-taught as an artist, Ningiukulu Teevee began making drawings for the community’s cooperative in the late 1990s.