SakKijâjuk is a word in the Labrador dialect of Inuktitut meaning “to be visible.” It's also, fittingly, the name of a nationally touring exhibition that lavishly introduces – “makes visible” – Inuit art from the region known by Indigenous people as Nunatsiavut.
This unique collection of sculptures, photographs, fur fashions and more will be shown at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, starting May 26. Can’t get to Winnipeg? Then buy the accompanying, stylish coffee table book SakKijâjuk: Art and Craft from Nunatsiavut. The author, Heather Igloliorte, an important voice in Inuit art these days, is an art history professor at Concordia University in Montreal. And the book, a joint project of The Rooms in St. John’s, N.L., and Goose Lane Editions in Fredericton, is just one of the many extraordinary illustrated books on Indigenous art published this year in Canada.
SakKijâjuk is not about stereotypical Inuit art. Instead, there are ghoulish night-time photographs by Jennie Williams, surreal oil paintings by Mark Igloliorte, classy silver work by Michael Massie and fire-engine red sealskin fashions by Maria Merkuratsuk.
Another Goose Lane book about breakthrough Inuit art, this one on the drawings of the late Annie Pootoogook, is to be published early in 2018. The book and an ongoing exhibition at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ont., are both called Cutting Ice, a term the McMichael says implies “something that matters or has consequence.”
Curator Nancy Campbell assembled a collection of the artist’s drawings, scenes from the humorous to the horrific that portray contemporary Inuit life. Campbell then shows how Pootoogook’s deceptively simple drawings became a major turning point in Inuit art and inspired the work of other acclaimed artists, including Shuvinai Ashoona, Pootoogook’s successor as the “It Girl” of Inuit art.
Pootoogook’s life was one of highs and lows. She won the $50,000 Sobey Art Award in 2006 but was stalked by the demons of domestic and substance abuse. After leaving Nunavut for Ottawa, she became a panhandler and mysteriously drowned in the Rideau River last year at age 47.
Work by some of the same Nunavut artists, including Pootoogook and Ashoona, is featured in the book Dorset Seen, published in 2017 following the 2013 exhibition of the same name at the Carleton University Art Gallery in Ottawa. The book’s authors are independent curator Leslie Boyd and Sandra Dyck, the gallery’s director.
The most significant Indigenous art exhibition of 2017 was undoubtedly Kent Monkman’s nationally touring extravaganza of paintings, Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience, detailing the devastating effects of colonialism on Indigenous people. A book of the same name, to be released in February, is authored by Monkman and Barbara Fischer, the director of the University of Toronto Art Centre. The exhibition was shown last summer at the Glenbow in Calgary and is heading to the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 2019 and the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver in 2020.
Another major Calgary exhibition this year was at the Nickle Galleries. The Writing on the Wall, a retrospective on the work of the late Alberta artist Joane Cardinal-Schubert, was accompanied by a visually stunning book edited by curator Lindsey Sharman and published by the University of Calgary Press.
Alex Janvier, another Alberta artist, was honoured in the past year with a touring exhibition organized by the National Gallery of Canada. Greg Hill is the main author of the accompanying 202-page book, Alex Janvier, which explores the artist’s distinctive paintings featuring abstract Indigenous iconography.
And finally, keep an eye out for Sonny Assu: A Selective History coming in February from Heritage House Publishing in Victoria. Several authors examine this British Columbia artist’s installations, sculptures, photographs, printmaking and paintings, which merge Indigenous motifs with pop-art sensibilities.
