For 65 years, the West Baffin Cooperative has put Kinngait, Nunavut, on the world map through art. It’s looking to continue reaching new audiences — and changing the narrative around Inuit art.
CBC News: With each stroke on the canvas, Shuvinai Ashoona shares a slice of life in Kinngait, Nunavut.
“My art is about how my world goes around, and where they come about,” she said.
The 63-year-old has called Kinngait home all her life, though she always manages to find new inspiration.
“I see more artists come around, and they prefer different art … they come back and forth, the way I move back and forth [with my art],” she said.
No stranger to international acclaim, her work has been displayed around the world. But a new feature exhibition at the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris still sparks a smile.
Unseen works by Ashoona are now on display there, alongside collections of the French-Swiss duo Claude Baud and Michel Jacot.
Baud and Jacot have been avid collectors of Inuit art for many years after living in Québec, according to Catherine Bédard, director at the Canadian Cultural Centre. Bédard partnered with Kinngait’s West Baffin Cooperative for the current exhibition.
images expand. The Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris features the work of many Inuit artists, including Paulassie Pootoogook (1927-2006) and his sister Sharni Pootoogook (1922-2003), as well as Pauta Saila (1916-2009), famous for his dancing bear sculptures, Pitaloosie Saila (1942-2021), and Kenojuak Ashevak (1927-2013).
Click on the following link to see captions for each of the above pictures as well as those below:
“They [Baud and Jacot] have artworks surrounding them all day long, all the time. It’s like a museum. I’ve never seen that before,” Bédard said.
Ashoona’s work reflects a more contemporary era of Kinngait’s art scene, which Bédard says is important to reflect with the 25th anniversary this year of Nunavut as a territory.
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Finding home in a foreign environment
Thousands of kilometres away, Ashoona’s drawings are also on display at the 15th annual Gwangju Biennale in South Korea.
On the outside, the Yangnim Art Centre in Gwangju bears the features of a hanok, a traditional Korean house.
Inside are different visions of home by six Inuit and three Korean artists.
The three levels of the house are painted blue, white and a brownish-gray. Korean performer Saewoong Ju says that is to represent the ocean, snow and rocks that surround Nunavut.
Earlier, he had performed a dance for the exhibition, alongside Iqaluit jewelry artist Mathew Nuqingaq, on a hill in Iqaluit.
images expand The Inuit artists part of this year’s exhibition at the Yangnim Art Centre in Gwangju, South Korea, include Saimaiyu Akesuk, Shuvinai Ashoona, Qavavau Manumie, Pitseolak Qimirpik, Ooloosie Saila, and Ningiukulu Teevee. Sae-woong Ju, Joheum Lee, and Seol-a Kim are the three Korean artists.
Feeling the wisps of grass between his toes, he says, gave him a feeling of home, even far away on Inuit land.
“I was supposed to wear my sneakers when I was dancing but it was so warm. And the grass, the ground, the land, was just calling me,” Ju said, so he performed barefoot.
This dance video of Saewoong Ju and Mathew Nuqingaq was filmed on a hill in Apex in June 2024. (Submitted by Saewoong Ju)
Click on the following link to view the video:
From Europe, to Asia, and beyond
West Baffin Cooperative’s general manager, William Huffman, was among 200 delegates on a Canadian trade mission earlier this year to Malaysia and Vietnam to promote the Nunavut studio’s work.
He’s preparing for another trade trip to the Philippines and Singapore in December.
It’s quite remarkable, he says, when he looks at how the art studio has grown over the past 65 years from being a “small wooden shack.”
“The Canadian government [in the early years] was very generous in supporting and promoting Inuit art as a means of creating a Canadian identity internationally,” he said.
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South of the Canadian border, in Seattle, Nathan Germain sees growing recognition of Inuit artists, particularly from Kinngait.
The co-curator of the city’s Steinbrueck Native Gallery puts that down to the growing awareness of life in the North, and Indigeneity more broadly around the world.
“I think it’s opening people’s minds to the idea of not relegating it to a separate society,” he said.
But Ann Lesk, co-owner of the American online gallery Alaska on Madison, worries the younger generation isn’t gravitating toward collecting art.
“The older generation of collectors is retiring … and the younger generation has not really filled the ranks,” Lesk said.
Changing the narrative around Inuit art
Huffman realizes times are changing — and so the West Baffin Cooperative will need to, as well.
That’ll require a concerted effort to promote up-and-coming artists, he says, but also a change to the narrative of Inuit art as “exotic” or “simple.”
“The reason I’m here is to tell you that Inuit art is extremely informed, very sophisticated work,” he said.
Germain agrees with that sentiment, though he believes the universality of some Inuit motifs, like bears and owls, can serve as a gateway for people to explore the culture further.
“That gives them sort of a basis to learn more about what it is, who’s behind it, and what it represents on a grander scale,” he said.
images expand. Ann Lesk has an extensive collection of Inuit art for her online gallery Alaska on Madison. However, because of U.S. import restrictions, she’s mostly limited to trading stone prints, graphics, and textiles.
Beyond that, Ann Lesk believes there are still too many legislative barriers for artists and collectors.
For starters, the restrictions under the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act mean she’s mostly limited to trading stone prints, graphics, and textiles — no whalebone, seal skin or ivory.
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Then there’s the problem of imitations of Inuit art, despite an American law that penalizes arts and crafts products which falsely claim to be Indigenous art. She calls the issue one of her “pet peeves.”
“They [imitations] are frequently offered at auction as genuine handmade Inuit soapstone carving, even when the subject is something like a squirrel, which is never seen in Nunavut,” she said.
Building the value of Inuit art
At the auction house, there is a clear divide in value for Inuit art, Lesk says.
There are a very small handful of well-known artists whose work is priced at hundreds of thousands of dollars.
With art being so intrinsic to Inuit culture, she says there are many more artists in the market though their work is sold for much less. That does make Inuit art more accessible to collectors, she says.
“They can acquire something that wasn’t churned out on an assembly line… and appreciate it without breaking the budget.”
Huffman says undervaluation of Inuit art is why he’s always looking at opportunities to present it at the most prestigious galleries in the world.
“We’re always looking at where we want this work to be showcased, and how we can leverage that to build market,” he said.
“Art is a luxury product. It’s not something people need, it’s something people desire. So how do we build that mystique… to provoke that desire?”
About the Author
Samuel Wat
Samuel Wat is a reporter with CBC Nunavut based in Iqaluit. He was previously in Ottawa, and in New Zealand before that. You can reach him at samuel.wat@cbc.ca
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