Born 1969, Cape Dorset, Nunavut.
Cape Dorset in Nunavut has long been the centre of Inuit art activity with the founding of the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative in the 1950s. Renowned artists such as Pudlo Pudlat, Kenojuak Ashevak and Napachie Pootoogook have mapped a history for artistic production in the region through the Eskimo Co-op and the Cape Dorset Print Collections. These elder artists grew up on the land and their work typically records and reflects the traditional Inuit lifestyle. This style is synonymous with what the South perceives Inuit art to look like.
Unlike many of her peers, Annie Pootoogook's work challenges conventional assumptions made of "Inuit" art. She is a chronicler of an evolving Inuit lifestyle for her generation, raised in two different worlds. Her drawings of domestic interiors and modern outpost camps reflect the disparate social, economic and physical realities of today's Canadian North. Many of Pootoogook's images are disturbing depictions of alcoholism, domestic violence, suicide, depression and drug addiction, each communicating a problematic Inuit and Southern experience, one that has changed dramatically in the past thirty years.
Nancy Campbell
Crack the Sky presents eight recent drawings by Annie Pootoogook.
Interview with Annie Pootoogook,
aired on May 15, CISM-FM (mp3, 1.3 mb)