10/12/2026
When Kenojuak Ashevak (1927-2013) was first encouraged to create drawings, her heart “started to pound like a heavy rock.” But lines began to form as she imagined “the animals and beautiful flowers that covered our beautiful, untouched land.”
Perhaps Ashevak returned to those same thoughts as she produced these four prints in the decades that followed. The emanation of feathers on an owl’s wing, the orderly procession of ravens and seagulls, the composite and exuberant forms of fantastical creatures. Avian motifs recur but never repeat. Playful and inventive, Ashevak continually transformed the familiar into something new.
The first woman to work at the Cape Dorset workshop at Kinngait and a pioneering figure in Inuit printmaking, Ashevak embodied the artistic impulse of “uuturaqtu”—to try different things. In these works alone, she printed on Japanese wove and French cotton papers, and experimented with techniques ranging from stonecut and stencil to lithograph, etching, and aquatint, achieving striking effects of gradated color and tonal contrast. Her extraordinary spirit of experimentation extended from subject to medium and expanded the possibilities of Inuit printmaking itself.
These striking prints are available to view by appointment in the Duffy Study Room on the 4th floor of the Gallery.
__________
Image details:
1. “The Sun's Return,” 1993. Stonecut and screenprint on Ise paper.
2. “Tulukaaraminiit (Many Young Ravens),” 1993. Stonecut and screenprint on Kizuki Kozo paper.
3. “Naujit (Seagulls),” 1996. Lithograph on BFK Rives Papers.
4. “Into the Light,” 1999. Etching and aquatint on Arches paper.
Prints: Gift of Mavis Lockwood and Jonathan Borak, M.D.
©Kenojuak Ashevak/West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative Ltd.
