365 DAYS OF ART

 ANNIE POOTOOGOOK (1969-2016)

The life of Annie Pootoogook tells an important national story, and her career marks a pivotal shift in the national consciousness around contemporary Inuit art. With a keen eye for detail and fearlessness in representing daily life—the celebratory, the frightening, and the mundane—she captured the attention of Southern audiences. Although imported culture and technologies have dramatically changed Inuit life, the North has also stayed true to tradition: community, food, and language remain sources of Inuit pride. In her drawings, Annie depicted what is still valued and unique in her culture and what is changing rapidly. She had a meteoric rise in the art world that was tragically cut short when she died in 2016.

Annie Pootoogook was born in 1969 in Cape Dorset, Nunavut. She began drawing in 1997 and although she did most of her work at home she was a steady presence at the Kinngait studios during the early part of her career. Annie was a member of an extraordinary artistic family. Her father, Eegyvadluk, was a talented carver and one of the first stonecut printmakers in the studios in Cape Dorset. Her mother, Napachie was a committed graphic artist and long-time contributor to the annual print collections. Her grandmother, Pitseolak Ashoona, was one of the first to experiment with the new medium of drawing during the transition years when Inuit were leaving their traditional camps and moving to permanent settlements in the Canadian Arctic. Pitseolak and Napachie went on to become two of the most prolific and highly respected Inuit graphic artists of their respective generations.

Annie Pootoogook was an instinctive chronicler of her times. She shared this sensibility with her mother and her grandmother, both of whom used their drawings to share their way of life with an outside audience. Annie’s drawings reflected her experience as a contemporary female artist living and working in the changing milieu of Canada’s far north. Although firmly rooted to the specifics of her time and place, she managed to transcend cultural boundaries and present the details of her everyday life in an engaging way, inviting the viewer into both her public and private worlds. From the apparently mundane (the line-up for the ATM machine at the Co-op store, watching television with her family) to the personal and intimate (her experience with spousal abuse, the loss of her mother) Annie expressed a wide range of content and emotions.

Annie had her first one person show in 2002 and was represented in several successful exhibitions during her career. She spent the summer of 2006 in Dufftown, Scotland where she was artist-in-residence at the Glenfiddich Distillery “Spirit off Creativity” program. Following a solo show at the The Power Plant gallery in Toronto, she went on to win the prestigious Sobey Arts Award in October and subsequently went on to exhibit at the Basel Art Fair and Documenta 12 in Kassel Germany. Her drawings are in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Toronto and several other notable institutions. Annie was the subject of a critically acclaimed documentary film by Site Media and her work has been shown in numerous public galleries in Canada and around the world.

THE ARTWORK

One of the last complete drawings done by Annie Pootoogook is Untitled (Kenojuak and Annie with Governor General Michaëlle Jean). An important late work, it shows the two highly influential Inuit artists standing in the office of Michaëlle Jean when she was serving as governor general of Canada. Jean was acting as the honorary patron of the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative for its fiftieth anniversary year. The work is a time capsule of a significant moment in the history of Canadian and Inuit art.

Kenojuak Ashevak (1927–2013) was a pivotal artist in establishing the recognition of Inuit art in Canada in its formative years. In this scene she is wearing her parka and printed skirt, while Annie, an artist who took Inuit art into the sphere of global contemporary art, wears a business suit. The exchange is happy and all are smiling. The office is formally decorated with a patterned carpet, long drapes pulled back with a sash, and sconces on the wall. Through the window we see a beautiful leafy tree, indicating the Southern locale. This drawing is significant in that it shows two notable Inuit women meeting the governor general, a meeting that celebrates their important contributions to the arts in Canada. The Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts, unlike many other national arts awards, had a precedent for honouring an Inuit artist: Kenojuak received the award in 2008.

Although Annie was most prolific while she lived in Kinngait and worked at the studios there, she continued to work in the South. There she would record notable events and people in her life, but these drawings were either not completed or not enticing to a public that was stubbornly fixated on its own ideas of the perceived exoticism and beauty of the North. Few of these drawings were distributed commercially.

Another drawing Annie made to record her life in the South is Sobey Award 2006, 2007. It is a self-portrait, with Annie standing alone and crying tears of happiness and wonder on the occasion when she received the Sobey Art Award. Sobey Awards, 2006, is a companion piece, showing her from the rear, facing a tightly assembled group of media and other attendees. In this drawing too Annie stands alone. Both works can be read as making a statement of loneliness and alienation, of Annie’s feelings of unease in public, in such formal company. The contrast is unmistakable in the easy smiles that brighten the faces of the three women in Untitled (Kenojuak and Annie with Governor General Michaëlle Jean). Despite the equally formal and potentially stressful occasion, having Kenojuak there along with Annie seems to have lightened the mood.