The world according to Ashevak

KIRSTEN MURPHY

The National Gallery of Canada will unveil 25 prints by Cape Dorset artist Kenojuak Ashevak this week, as part of “To Make Something Beautiful,” an exhibition of Ashevak’s work.

From April 5 to Oct. 20, the world famous prints — many of owls and ravens with colourful swirling tales and feathers — will hang in the prestigious gallery. The artist’s illustrious career began in the late 1950s when Inuit art promoter James Houston commissioned the young bride to sew three sealskin designs. The request was the start of something beautiful and now historical.

“The [original] design’s simple forms and bold outlines were particularly suited for printmaking,” wrote Ellie Klippenstein in her essay The Evolution of Kenojuak Ashevak’s Two Dimensional Inuit Art Work.

“Kenojuak points at different sources for her imagery: her imagination, her memories and her experiences. Since she does not know a lot of oral tradition, she prefers not to express many of the myths and legends for fear that they may be misrepresented. She prefers to tell of her own experiences and of the Inuit lifestyle as she knew it growing up.”

The show spans five decades of printmaking.

Exhibit curator Marie Routledge said “Making Something Beautiful” is more than a retrospective collection.

“It’s meant to look at how she works as an artist. She’s someone who takes faces and owls and birds and manipulates them into something that is visually pleasing, something that is beautiful,” Routledge said.

The gallery selected the exhibit’s title, and Ashevak enthusiastically endorsed the choice, Routledge said.

Ashevak lives and works in Cape Dorset. An employee at the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative said the artist was pleased with the Ottawa opening. Ashevak is scheduled to make a guest appearance at the National Gallery on April 28.

Deemed the most internationally recognized Inuit artist by Canadian art critics, Ashevak received the Order of Canada in 1967 and was elected to the Royal Academy in 1974.

Three of her images were reproduced as postage stamps and her work has appeared in galleries across the United States, Europe and Canada. She has been the subject of numerous books, book chapters, magazines and newspaper articles.

During the seven-month run of “To Make Something Beautiful,” the National Film Board’s Eskimo Artist: Kenojuak will play continuously in the Inuit wing of the gallery. The 1964 film is about the life and times of the artist and her connection to the land.

Ashevak is no stranger to the National Gallery of Canada. In 1961, the gallery acquired The Enchanted Owl. The gallery now owns 64 prints.