‘Her rise was meteoric’: Pootoogook drawing named one of 21st century’s best works

A drawing by famed Nunavut artist the late Annie Pootoogook has been named one of the best artworks of the 21st century by ARTNews, a magazine based in New York City.

That shouldn’t come as a surprise, says William Huffman.

“Her rise was meteoric; it was amazing,” said Huffman, arts administrator and curator at the West Baffin Eskimo Co-Operative in Kinngait, where Pootoogook was a member artist.

“Once people started paying attention, everyone started paying attention.”

He said her early art was “quotidian,” or everyday slice of Inuit life. Later, her work became more challenging.

The drawing singled out by ARTNews is titled Man Abusing His Partner. It depicts a man holding a large piece of wood and a woman crying, gripping the bed beneath her as the man approaches.

Huffman said the scene is very modern and something people from all over the world can understand, yet there are also certain elements — parkas hanging on a wall, a sealskin blanket on the bed — that place it very much in an Inuit household.

Earlier this month, Annie Pootoogook Park in Ottawa is the site of this year’s Red Dress Day event to recognize and remember missing and murdered Indigenous women. (Photo by Jorge Antunes)

Inuit art typically has particular motifs, such as seals or polar bears, animals, people and scenes from the Arctic. Pootoogook’s work, while very Inuit, was also very modern and depicted scenes of contemporary Inuit life and culture, Huffman said.

In her magazine article published March 5, Anne Doran — who is an accomplished artist herself — noted that Pootoogook, who comes from a long line of Inuit artists in Cape Dorset, now Kinngait, wasn’t the first Inuit artist to take on modern themes.

“Both Ashoona, Annie Pootoogook’s grandmother, and Napachie Pootoogook, her mother, however, were among the first Inuit artists to create autobiographical artworks,” Doran wrote.

“Following their example, [Annie] Pootoogook likewise based her drawings on personal experience, including her struggles with addiction and —as here — abusive relationships.”

Speaking of the Man Abusing His Partner  work by Pootoogook, Huffman said, “The moment that this work was revealed publicly, suddenly it changed what people thought Inuit art could be capable of.”

Pootoogook struggled with drug and alcohol addiction for much of her life, sometimes living on the streets of Ottawa. On Sept. 19, 2016, her body was found near the Rideau River. Though her death was ruled suspicious, no arrests have been made.

A park in Ottawa was posthumously renamed in her honour. She was 47 when she died.