Description
The Breath and Soul of the Earth
There’s this continual sound we have in Tuktoyaktuk during the winter where everything whistles and creaks in the house, every corner and wall comes alive as you become aware of the space you are in. This wailing of the house moves alongside you with every ominous gust. The house becomes silent yet deafening at the same time, as if the voices are lingering in the air. Here my family gathers to tell stories after the power goes out. After the storm carves hard snowdrifts making them as solid as concrete, you walk along as it echoes and the snow beneath you breathes a sound similar to a soft hum in your throat. I find comfort in the ocean here and the strong currents that live along her bountiful shore.
Shuvinai Ashoona was born in Cape Dorset in August of 1961. She is the daughter of Kiawak Ashoona and Sorosilutu, both well known for their contributions to the arts in Cape Dorset.
Shuvinai began drawing in 1996. She works with pen and ink, coloured pencils and oil sticks and her sensibility for the landscape around the community of Cape Dorset is particularly impressive. Her recent work is very personal and often meticulously detailed. Shuvinai’s work was first included in the Cape Dorset annual print collection in 1997 with two small dry-point etchings entitled Interior (97-33) and Settlement (97-34). Since then, she has become a committed and prolific graphic artist, working daily in the Kinngait Studios [1] In Marcia Connolly’s 2010 documentary Ghost Noise, Ashoona says, “I do not draw simply the surface of the landscape, I feel I am capturing the breath and soul of the earth.” [2] In some cases her pen and ink drawings are dream-like, bringing spirit onto the paper. Recently, Ashoona is the first Inuk recipient of the Gershon Iskowitz prize at the Art Gallery of Ontario presented to artists who have made outstanding contributions in the visual arts in Canada.
Constantly drawing in the studio during her visit to the NSCAD Lithography Workshop in May 2019, she made a wide variety of drawings. Her most recent lithographic print shows a self portrait of the artist wearing a bright red coat and blue jeans laying on the rocks of Peggy’s cove. She lays along the rocks as if she is a part of the land, her hair a lush seaweed green and one with the boulders that live there. The rocks are reminiscent of my hometown, a community called Tuktoyaktuk, NT on Arctic Ocean, and this image breathes a memory of the familiar rocks I jumped from as a child. In finding comfort in the ocean and the strong currents that come to life along the shore, for me this print is a depiction of the artist finding a piece of home within an unfamiliar space. Ashoona’s drawing of seaweed hair echoes a place in my memory of my grandmother not letting me cut my long, dark hair because our ancestors are protecting me through every strand.
Ashoona and I both come from small communities where the land is bare and sea surrounds us like a caring mother. Ashoona’s work comments on the realities of the new technologies of being in a northern community, depicting contemporary lifestyles in the North and the complexity of community life in the face of climate change. We are taught that the land is the most sacred because our ancestors have seen the same rocks and sunsets hugging the horizon of arctic waters. This work is a beautiful reminder of how small we are compared to the force of the land and that finding familiarity is a gift, a memory, a way back home.
Citations/Footnotes:
- Shuvinai Ashoona, Dorset Fine Arts, accessed September 10, 2019, http://www.dorsetfinearts.com/shuvinai-ashoona
- Connolly, Marcia. National Film Board of Canada. “Ghost Noise”. 2010.
—Darcie Bernhardt (2019)
Shuvinai Ashoona was born in Cape Dorset and is the daughter of Kiawak Ashoona and Sorosilutu, both well known for their contributions to the arts in Cape Dorset. Shuvinai began drawing in 1996. She works with pen and ink, coloured pencils and oil sticks and her sensibility for the landscape around the community of Cape Dorset is particularly impressive. Her recent work is very personal and often meticulously detailed. Shuvinai’s work was first included in the Cape Dorset annual print collection in 1997 with two small dry-point etchings entitled Interior (97-33) and Settlement (97-34). Since then, she has become a committed and prolific graphic artist, working daily in the Kinngait Studios. Her work has attracted the attention of several notable private galleries as well as public institutions around the globe.