Inuit art on display for first time at Kelowna Art Gallery

Photo: West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative

Kenojuak Ashevak, Decorative Char, 2004, ink, coloured pencil on paper, 51 ? 66 cm. Collection of West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative

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Photo: West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative Photo: West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative Photo: Nunavut Independent Television Network Photo: Nunavut Independent Television Network Photo: Contributed Photo: West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative

A Story in Three Parts opens at Kelowna Art Gallery

If you're looking for something off-the-beaten-path this holiday season, a new exhibition at the Kelowna Art Gallery will line the walls of the Kelowna Art Gallery could be what you're looking for.

It's titled 'A Story in Three Parts: Ashevak, Pootoogook, Isuma,' and it brings together three distinct but connected narratives, which explore the past and present of Inuit creative expression.

“Okanagan audiences are in for a treat. This will be the first time we’ve shown work by these groundbreaking artists,” says Nataley Nagy, Executive Director at the Gallery “The breathtaking prints, eerie and playful monochramatic drawings, along with the film and video works, will transport patrons thousands of miles away to the Canadian Arctic.”

The exhibition features the work of Kenojuak Ashevak (1927–2013) and Sharni Pootoogook (1922–2003), early generation Kinngait artists who became two of the first to create drawings, prints, and sculptures under the auspices of the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative.

“Beautiful, vibrant, colourful, yet brooding, stark, and sometimes haunting — these are the curious contradictions which are analogous to life in the Canadian Arctic,” says Huffman. “These three stories are a series of moments in which women of the North are the anchors of a constantly evolving Arctic narrative, ensuring prosperity, uplifting us, and inspiring us to overcome.”