The Eagle's Shadow

Inuit fabric artist Janet Nungnik tells the story of her life.

Janet Nungnik’s wall hangings tell the story of her life and that of her people, the Padlermiut, a small group of inland-dwelling Inuit whose traditional territory is south of Baker Lake, Nunavut.

Her exhibition at the Marion Scott Gallery in Vancouver includes pieces like One Fine Day, which shows people fashioning rope from caribou hide.

Northern Lights (Inside the Iglu at Night) offers an aerial perspective of a family sleeping in an igloo. And In Love expresses Nungnik’s feelings for her late husband. She met him when she was just three years old.

Nungnik’s show, The Eagle’s Shadow, on view until April 27, includes 15 embroidered and appliqué works produced over the last 17 years.

“The clarity of Nungnik's cut-out forms gives these complex works a rare expressive power and graphic immediacy,” says Robert Kardosh, the gallery’s director. “At the same time, the often dream-like images are filled with a range of delicate details that enrich their meaning, the embroidered and beaded surfaces attaining a tactile presence.”

Nungnik was born in 1954 at a remote camp west of Hudson Bay and remembers the famine of the late 1950s, when caribou herds changed their migratory routes, leaving the region’s people without a food source.

Her father moved the family to Baker Lake so his children could live at home while attending school. Nungnik began making wall hangings in the early 1970s, inspired by Jessie Oonark, a textile artist in Baker Lake.

Most of Nungnik’s images are accompanied by verse-like text in English that acts as a parallel expression of her thoughts. ■

The Eagle’s Shadow is on view at the Marion Scott Gallery in Vancouver from March 30 to April 27, 2019.

Marion Scott Gallery

2423 Granville St, Vancouver, British Columbia V6H 3G5

604-685-1934

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