A Conversation about works by Iljuwas Bill Reid and Jin-me Yoon
In the tiny hamlet of Kinngait, Nunavut, Shuvinai Ashoona (b. 1961) is a pearl—an artist protected from the world at large, who relishes the daily routine and support of working at Kinngait Studios. She is the granddaughter of iconic Inuit artist Pitseolak Ashoona and the daughter of renowned sculptor Kiugak Ashoona. In the mid-1990s Shuvinai began producing detailed drawings that were made into lithographs, etchings, and stonecut prints. Her early works were primarily monochromatic depictions of natural landscapes and traditions of the North, but by the late 1990s, her attentions shifted to depictions of fantastical creatures, dream-like landscapes, and aerial-perspective representations of a global community, expressed in vivid colour.
“She creates highly imaginative representations of inner visions and otherworldly projections, building rich environments drawn from her surroundings, the people she loves, and the movies she watches.”
– Nancy G. Campbell
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Shuvinai is an artist of superlative talent, her work characterized by full and elaborate depictions of the natural landscape and social networks of the North. Shuvinai Ashoona: Life & Work celebrates the influences of an artist whose rich graphic imagery conveys an intricate and textured interior world. Her distinctive style situates her in a category apart from other contemporary artists. Using pencil, pen and ink, and markers to render dense, highly imaginative representations of inner visions, transcendental projections, and the exterior world, her art reflects the intersection of values between the traditional North and the contemporary South.
Sandra Brewster:Traces of Home
Celebrating Canada’s Future Artists
Toronto artist Sandra Brewster foregrounds Black diasporic experience in her multidisciplinary practice. Born to parents who emigrated from Guyana to Toronto in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Brewster examines the effects of migration on her family and other individuals of Caribbean and African descent in her community. Working with photography, video, drawing, and painting, she uncovers the complexities of diasporic identities while challenging fixed notions of Blackness. This exhibition features works made by Brewster over the past fifteen years, from her early charcoal drawings to the photo-based gel transfers that comprise her widely acclaimed recent series Blur, 2017–19. Through her highly evocative and multilayered images, Brewster reveals how her subjects are shaped by memories, stories, and histories that encompass great spans of distance and time.
Click here to read the essay that accompanies this online exhibition.