Kenojuak Ashevak | |
|---|---|
| ᕿᓐᓄᐊᔪᐊᖅ ᐋᓯᕙᒃ (Qinnuajuaq Aasivak) | |
 Ashevak in 1960 | |
| Born | Kenojuak Ashevak October 3, 1927 |
| Died | January 8, 2013(2013-01-08) (aged 85) |
| Nationality | Inuk |
| Known for | soapstone carver, graphic artist |
| Movement | Inuit art |
| Spouse | Johnniebo Ashevak (died 1972)Etyguyakjua Pee (died 1977)Joanassie Igiu (died 1978) |
| Awards | Order of Canada |
Kenojuak Ashevak,CC ONu RCA (Inuktitut:ᕿᓐᓄᐊᔪᐊᖅ ᐋᓯᕙᒃ,Qinnuajuaq Aasivak) was a CanadianInuk artist. She was born on October 3, 1927 at Camp Kerrasak on southern Baffin Island, and died on January 8, 2013 in Cape Dorset, Nunavut. Known primarily for her drawings as a graphic artist, she had a diverse artistic experience, making sculpture and engraving and working with textiles and also on stained glass. She is celebrated[3] as a leading figure of modernInuit art and one of Canada's preeminent artists and cultural icons.[4]
Part of a pioneering generation of Arctic creators, her career spanned more than five decades. She made graphic art, drawings and prints in stone cut, lithography and etching, beloved by the public, museums and collectors alike.[5][6] Kenojuak mainly painted animals in fantastical, brightly-colored aspects, but also painted landscapes and scenes of everyday life, in a desire to make them beautiful by her own standards, and convey a spirit of happiness and positivity. She had an intuitive and sensitive way of working: she began her work without having a clear idea of the final result, letting herself be guided by her intuition and her own perception of colours and shapes. She painted throughout her life, never ceasing to seek out new techniques to renew her artistic creation. Her fantastical, seemingly simple works became more complex with time, taking on a more technical aspect. At the end of her life, the artist returned to simpler, more singular forms and even brighter colors.
Ashevak surmounted her circumstances to become an artist. Her range of mediums was exceptionally broad and included stained glass. Her achievements were honoured. She was the first Inuk artist inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame (2001), was made an Officer of theOrder of Canada (1967) and promoted to Companion in 1982. She received theGovernor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts (2008) and theOrder of Nunavut (2012). Her work, with its superb design qualities, was used for Canadian stamps, coins and banknotes. Kenojuak's best-known work, making her one of the most famous Inuit artists, remainsThe Enchanted Owl (1960). This major work by the artist was used on a stamp to commemorate the centenary of the Northwest Territories in the 1970s. Her artistic work is thus recognized as an integral part of Inuit culture, and more broadly of Canadian culture. In 2017, theBank of Canada unveiled a commemorative $10 banknote in honour ofCanada's 150th birthday featuring Ashevak's printOwl's Bouquet on the note. She received Honorary Doctorates fromQueen's University (1991) and theUniversity of Toronto (1992) and many films were made about her life.
Kenojuak Ashevak was born in anigloo in anInuit camp, Ikirasaqa[1] or Ikirasaq,[2] at the southern coast ofBaffin Island. Kenojuak grew up in the heart of the semi-nomadic hunting tradition. Her father, Ushuakjuk, an Inuk hunter and fur trader, and her mother, Silaqqi, named Kenojuak after Silaqqi's deceased father.[7] According to this Inuit naming tradition, the love and respect that had been accorded to her during her lifetime would now pass on to their daughter.[8] Kenojuak also had a brother and a sister.Kenojuak remembered Ushuakjuk as "a kind and benevolent man." Her father, a respectedangakkuq (shaman), "had more knowledge than average mortals, and he would help all the Inuit people [sic]." According to Kenojuak, her father believed he could predict weather, predict good hunting seasons and even turn into a walrus; he also had the ability "to make fish swarm at the surface so it was easier to fish."[citation needed] Her father came into conflict with Christian converts, and some enemies assassinated him in a hunting camp in 1933, when she was only six.[8][9]
_and_Kenojuak_Ashevak_(right).jpg)
After her father's murder, Kenojuak moved with her widowed mother Silaqqi and family to the home of Silaqqi's mother, Koweesa, who taught her traditional crafts, including the repair of seal skins for trade with theHudson's Bay Company and how to make waterproof clothes sewn with caribou sinew.[10]
When she was 19, her mother, Silaqqi, and stepfather, Takpaugni, arranged for her to marry Johnniebo Ashevak (1923–1972), a local Inuk hunter. Kenojuak was reluctant, she said, even playfully throwing pebbles at him when he would approach her.[11] In time, however, she came to love him for his kindness and gentleness, a man who developed artistic talents in his own right and who sometimes collaborated with her on projects; theNational Gallery of Canada holds two of Johnniebo's works,Taleelayo with Sea Bird (1965) andHare Spirits (1960).[12]
She fell victim to tuberculosis, hospitalized between 1952 and 1955 in Parc Savard hospital in Quebec city where she's going to meet Harold Pfeiffer who taught arts and crafts to hospital patients, and a civil administrator and pioneer Inuit art promoterJames Archibald Houston who will help her to launch her career.
She had just given birth when she was forcibly transferred; the baby was adopted by a neighbouring family. Several of Kenojuak's children died while she was confined in hospital.[13]
In 1966, Kenojuak and Johnniebo moved to Cape Dorset to enable her children to attend school.[14] Many of their children and grandchildren succumbed to disease, as did her husband after 26 years of marriage. Three daughters of Kenojuak, Mary, Elisapee Qiqituk, and Aggeok, died in childhood, and four sons, Jamasie, her adopted son Ashevak, and Kadlarjuk and Qiqituk. The latter two were adopted at birth by another family.[8][15]
The year after Johnniebo died in 1972, Kenojuak remarried, to Etyguyakjua Pee; he died in 1977. In 1978 she married Joanassie Igiu.[16] She had 11 children by her first husband and adopted five more; seven of her children died in childhood.[16] At the time of her death from lung cancer, she was living in awood-frame house inCape Dorset (now Kinngait).[11]
Kenojuak Ashevak became one of the firstInuit women inCape Dorset to begin drawing. She worked ingraphite,coloured pencils andfelt-tip pens, and occasionally usedposter paints,watercolours oracrylics. She created many carvings fromsoapstone and thousands ofdrawings,etchings,stone cut prints andprints — all sought after by museums and collectors.[17] She designed several drawings forCanadian stamps andcoins, and in 2004 she created the first Inuk-designed stained-glass window for theJohn Bell Chapel inOakville, Ontario. In 2017, the $10 bill released in celebration of Canada's 150th birthday features Kenojuak's stone-cut and stencil printed work called "Owl’s Bouquet" in silver holographic foil.[18]
During Ashevak's stay at Parc Savard hospital inQuebec City, 1952 to 1955 she learned to make dolls from Harold Pfeiffer and to do beadwork. At the end of her hospital stay, her crafts attracted the attention of a civil administrator and pioneer Inuit art promoterJames Archibald Houston and his wife alma who encouraged her to persevere with her artistic activities.[19] Houston introduced print-making to Cape Dorset artists in the 1950s, and he and his wife began marketing Inuit arts and crafts, including an exhibit of Inuit art in 1959.[20] James Houston wrote about this time in 1999 : she was hesitant at first, claiming that she could not draw and that drawing was a man’s business. Yet the next time that she visited the Houstons, the sheets of paper that Alma had given her were filled with pencil sketches.[19] In 1958 her first print,Rabbit Eating Seaweed, was produced from one of her designs on a sealskin bag, and by 1959 Kenojuak and otherCape Dorset Inuit had formed theWest Baffin Eskimo Cooperative as asenlavik (workshop) for aspiring Inuit artists, later known as Kinngait Studios.[8] Fellow members includedPitaloosie Saila, Mayoreak Ashoona, andNapatchie Pootagook.[21]
The first woman to take part in the printmaking workshop in Cape Dorset, Kenojuak soon found success : her work was soon recognized internationally. First displayed in art catalogs, her works were later exhibited in art galleries. In 1970, Kenojuak and her husband created a mural for the World Expo in Osaka. She became a member of the Royal Canadian Academy in 1974, and a member of the Order of Canada in 1982. In 2002, her work was exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada in the exhibition Kenojuak Ashevak: To make something beautiful. She received the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2008, and became a member of the Order of Nunavut in 2012.
Her reception in southern Canada was in fact rapidly favourable :Rabbit Eating Seaweed was Ashevak's first print, part of a debut exhibition of Inuit graphics. The young woman from the remote Canadian North was an immediate success, said Christine Lalonde, an expert in Inuit art with theNational Gallery of Canada. 'She had her own sense of design... She was already willing to let the pencil go, because she had the hand and the eye co-ordination to make the image she already had in her head.' The National Gallery owns several copies ofThe Enchanted Owl, including the original pencil sketch from 1960. That sketch reveals much, said Lalonde. 'It's a very simple drawing — pencil on pulp paper. But you can see even then how confident and sure her line was as she was making the curves of the fanning feathers.'[20]
In 1963 she was the subject of aNational Film Board of Canada documentary by producerJohn Feeney,Eskimo Artist: Kenojuak, about Kenojuak, then 35, and her family, as well as traditional Inuit life on Baffin Island. The film showed a stonecutter carving her design into a relief block in stone, cutting away all the non-printing surfaces; she would then apply ink to the carved stone, usually in two or more colours, and carefully make 50 "shadow" prints for sale.[22] With the money she earned from the film, Johnniebo was able to purchase his own canoe and become an independent hunter to help provide for the family, which now included a new daughter, Aggeo, and an adopted son, Ashevak.[8]
National Gallery of Canada art expert Christine Lalonde marvelled at her confident artistry: "When you see her, you realize she doesn't use an eraser. She just sits down and she starts to draw."[20]
Ashevak created several pieces of work to commemorate the creation of Nunavut, the third Canadian Territory, including a piece commissioned by the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs,Nunavut Qajanatuk (Our Beautiful Land) for the signing of the Inuit Land Claim Agreement in Principle in April 1990;Nunavut, a large hand-coloured lithograph to commemorate the signing of the Final Agreement early in 1994; a large diptych titledSiilavut, Nunavut (Our Environment, Our Land) in April 1999, when the Territory officially came into being.[23]
The work of Ashevak Kenojuak can be found in the collections of Canada's National Gallery,[24] the Art Gallery of Ontario,[25] and the Burnaby Art Gallery.[26]
Kenojuak became the first Inuk artist inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame in 2001, and travelled to Toronto with her daughter, Silaqi, to attend the ceremony.[23]
Up until her death, Kenojuak contributed annually to the Cape Dorset Annual Print Release and continued to create new works.[20][19] She was one of the last living artists from the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative.
ACBC report of Kenojuak's death characterized her as a person of unfeigned humility and simplicity:
Since her death, prices for Kenojuak's work have reached new records, including $59,000CAD paid for a copy ofRabbit Eating Seaweed.[28]
Kenojuak described her work thus in 1980:
"I just take these things out of my thoughts and out of my imagination, and I don't really give any weight to the idea of its being an image of something.... I am just concentrating on placing it down on paper in a way that is pleasing to my own eye, whether it has anything to do with subjective reality or not. And that is how I have always tried to make my images, and that is still how I do it, and I haven't really thought about it any other way than that. That is just my style, and is the way I started and the way I am today."[29]
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In 2004, Kenojuak designed astained glass window for a chapel atAppleby College inOakville, Ontario. The window, of anArctic char along with anowl against a vibrantly blue background, is the first such window made by an Inuk artist; it was suggested by two Biblical stories in which Jesusfeeds a large crowd of people with two fish and a few loaves of bread, which for Kenojuak thoroughly embodied the spirit of the Inuit community, where food is always shared. The window was dedicated byAndrew Atagotaaluk,Bishop of the Arctic, on November 9, 2004, celebrating the 75th anniversary ofJohn Bell Chapel.[30]
Her work is included in the collection of the Art Museum at theUniversity of Toronto,[31]St. Lawrence University,[32] theNational Gallery of Canada,[33] theMetropolitan Museum of Art,[34] theBrooklyn Museum[35] and the Smithsonian'sNational Museum of the American Indian.[36]
In 2020, Cape Dorset Fine Arts organized the touring exhibitionKenojuak Ashevak: Life and Legacy.[5]
At the Heffel Auction, Post-War & Contemporary Art, November 20, 2024, LOT 008,The Enchanted Owl, stonecut on paper24 x 26 in, 61 x 66 cm, Estimate: $125,000 - $175,000 CAD, Sold for: $289,250 (including Buyer's Premium).[41]
| External videos | |
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 " Kenojuak Ashevak" –Historica Canada. -Heritage Minutes (1:00 min) |
The search engine Google showed a specialdoodle on its Canadian home page on October 3, 2014, for Kenojuak Ashevak's 87th Birthday.[42]
On October 19, 2016, aHeritage Minute was released byHistorica Canada. For the first time ever, the Heritage Minute is also narrated in a language other than French or English, in this caseInuktitut. Her granddaughter narrates the Heritage Minute, as well as appearing in it with her family. It was premiered in Cape Dorset, Nunavut, where it was also filmed.[43]
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