A Conversation with Shuvinai Ashoona and William Huffman
Saturday, March 9, 3-4 PM.
Coffee and tea to be served.
2423 Granville Street.
In conjunction with the opening of Shuvinai Ashoona’s new exhibition at Marion Scott Gallery, we are pleased to present an afternoon conversation with Kinngait-based artist Shuvinai Ashoona and William Huffman, General Manager of the West Baffin Cooperative. Their discussion will focus on Inuit art’s growing international reputation, a phenomenon that is being driven in part by Ashoona’s own explosive emergence onto the global art world stage. Ashoona and Huffman will explore some of the reasons for Inuit art’s global appeal and what this surge of interest means for the artists of Kinngait and other northern communities more generally. Seats will be limited, to RSVP please email madeline@marionscottgallery.com
Shuvinai Ashoona is a third-generation Inuk artist based in Kinngait, Nunavut. The daughter of the well-known sculptor Kiuga Ashoona and granddaughter of the legendary graphic artist Pitseolak Ashoona, Shuvinai’s unconventional drawings in which the fantastical and the non-fantastical realms are combined in an uneasy equilibrium have revolutionized Inuit art and the way the public perceives it. In 2019, her work was the subject of a major exhibition organized and circulated nationally by Toronto’s The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery. Ashoona has won many awards including the prestigious Gershon Iskowitz Prize in 2018. A suite of her drawings was included in The Milk of Dreams, the feature exhibition of the 59th Venice Biennale, where she was awarded a Special Mention. Her works are in many prominent public and private collections in Canada, the US and the UK.
William Huffman leads the national and international programs of the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative and its not-for-profit arm the Kinngait Arts Foundation. Over that last several years, he has played a critical role on the campaign team that generated $13,000,000 in public and private sector funding to build the Kenojuak Cultural Centre in Kinngait (Cape Dorset), Nunavut, which now houses the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative offices and studio facility. As a representative of the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative, he provides expert witness testimony to both the Senate and the House of Commons on social and cultural issues related to Inuit art and artists.
Click here to read the press release.
