Kenojuak Ashevak Honoured Again
Kenojuak Ashevak, well-known Inuit artist from Kinngait (Cape Dorset) in Nunavut received on Friday, March 28 in Ottawa The Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts, Canada’s foremost distinctions for excellence in these artistic disciplines, were created in 1999 by the Governor General of Canada and the Canada Council for the Arts.
” I just take these things out of my thoughts, and out of my imagination, and… not try to show what anything looks like in the material world… It’s more an interplay of form and colour. ” Kenojuak explains about her art.
She is probably the best known and most acclaimed of all the Inuit artists who have emerged in the North in the last half century. Her own story is as remarkable as the story of Kinngait and its printmakers and sculptors. Many of Kenojuak Ashevak’s drawings, prints and sculptures have become icons, etched into the public consciousness.
Her bold shapes, bright colours and fantastical creatures have endured for some 50 years, reflecting a unique vision and a special relationship to the land. Born in 1927 in Ikerrasak, a campsite on southern Baffin Island, she lived a traditional nomadic life on the land before settling her family in Kinngait where she still lives.
Kenojuak Ashevak was featured in a National Film Board production, Eskimo Artist – Kenojuak, and her graphic images have been used on Canadian stamps. She is a Companion of the Order of Canada, a member of the Royal Canadian Academy and the recipient of two honorary doctorates. Her sculpture, drawings and prints are found in all major Canadian collections as well as international museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The National Gallery of Canada, in collaboration with the Canada Council for the Arts, presents an exhibition devoted to the eight winners of the 2008 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts : Kenojuak Ashevak, Serge Giguère, Chantal Gilbert, Michel Goulet, Alex Janvier, Tanya Mars, Eric Metcalfe And Dr. Shirley Thomson. Representing the practices of some of Canada’s leading artists working in painting, performance, video, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, fine craft and film, the exhibition showcases a selection of some 25 works.
