Shuvinai Ashoona: "Clin d'oeil" to Shuvinai Ashoona

"When I start to draw I remember things that I have experienced or seen. Although I do not attempt to recreate these images exactly, that is what might happen. Sometimes they come out more realistically but sometimes they turn out completely different. That is what happens when I draw."

- Shuvinai Ashoona (From “Ghost Noise”; Produced and directed by Marcia Connolly, 2010)

The gallery Pierre-François Ouellette is honored to present in collaboration with Dorset Fine Arts/West Baffin Eskimo Co-Operative on their 60th year anniversary of the creation of the Kinngait Studios a selection of drawings of the 2018 Gershon Iskowitz Prize: Shuvinai Ashoona whose major touring exhibition organized by the PowerPlant just opened at the Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery - Concordia University.

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Shuvinai Ashoona (b. 1961) began to draw in the early 1990s. Although never formally trained, Ashoona's family and the Kinngait Studios in Cape Dorset have provided her with a creative atmosphere. Her grandmother is the renowned artist Pitseolak Ashoona and her father is sculptor Kiawak Ashoona.

“In the past Ashoona's work tended to focus on the Arctic landscape. Today, her work explores a new dynamism through compositions that depict human figures and other creatures with cleverly hidden imagery, and utilizes a wide colour spectrum. The evolution in Ashoona's artistic style points to a highly developed artistic sensibility. Her often unusual and imaginative creatures, animals, and monsters are balanced by a very careful and detailed drawing technique. Her work is comprised of both the elements of her community environment as well as the personal world of her own imagination.

Represented in numerous group and solo exhibitions in Canada, her work has been included in several international exhibitions, such as Basel, Switzerland's 'City Sky' (2008), the Sydney Biennale (2012), and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art's major exhibition "Oh, Canada" (2012). She is a leading contemporary Canadian artist and is in numerous collections of major art institutions, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the BMO Financial Group, the Canada Council Art Bank, the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection, the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, the MacKenzie Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada, the TD Bank Group, and the Winnipeg Art Gallery” 

- Russell Bingham, "Shuvinai Ashoona" Historica Canada.