Napachie Pootoogook

Additional Information

Other associated events: Talk by Darlene Coward Wight, Curator of Inuit Art at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Wednesday, September 5, 7:00 pm, Sherwood Village Programme Room

On tour from the Winnipeg Art Gallery is an exhibition of autobiographical drawings by Cape Dorset artist Napachie Pootoogook. The detailed drawings offer viewers meaningful insights into the life of an Inuit woman who experienced the dramatic social, economic, and religious upheavals that occurred in the Canadian Arctic in the 1950s. These sixty-nine drawings document Pootogook's life growing up in traditional camps on South Baffin Island and her later years as a wife and mother. The narratives describe real events as she saw them and stories told by her artist mother Pitseolak Ashoona and other Sikusilaamiut (Inuit of South Baffin Island). In syllabic texts she describes the subjects of her drawings in an attempt to accurately record life as it was from the 1930s to the 1950s. Many of Pootoogook's images are concerned with the particular experiences of women, including forced marriage, spousal abuse, and societal taboos associated with childbirth. Other drawings depict local history and customs, folklore and social relationships, and extraordinary individuals such as shamans and camp leaders.

Napachie Pootoogook (Installation View), 2007.