Reviewed by Robin Laurence
With his white T-shirt, faded blue jeans, and sunglasses pushed to the top of his head, Jutai Toonoo looks a lot like a Gastown tourist browsing through the shops and galleries on Water Street. In this case, however, the venue is the Marion Scott Gallery, and the works he’s looking over are his own-32 highly expressive stone sculptures the Cape Dorset artist has produced since 2000.
“I am a tourist,” Toonoo says with a laugh when we’re introduced. Although he has travelled with his art to Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal, this is his first visit to Vancouver. More importantly, Life Forms: Jutai Toonoo in Cape Dorset is his first solo show. “I’m very nervous,” he says, indicating the butterflies in his stomach. “I can’t really take criticism.”
His anxiety is misplaced but understandable. Toonoo pulls difficult feelings out of himself when he carves, and, when he exhibits, exposes his naked soul to the marketplace. His work is quite distinct from our cultural preconceptions of what Inuit art should look like. The sculptures are executed in serpentinite, local to the Cape Dorset area, yet there are no images of Arctic animals here-no seals, no caribou, no polar bears-nor are there depictions of legendary creatures or shamanic transformations. No hunting scenes, no fishing scenes, no representations of Inuit people in fur-lined parkas and sealskin boots. Instead, the gallery is filled with bare human faces and figures.
