It’s hard to comprehend what life is like in Kinngait, a chilly hamlet home to a thriving artist cooperative in the Arctic north of Canada. It’s currently the depths of winter there, with an average temperature of -20C and just four to five hours of daylight. Challenging conditions for an artist, I think to myself, casting my mind to the premium placed on large windows and natural light in studios closer to home.
As it turns out the challenge here isn’t so much making work as making it to work: in these parts the darkness acts as a nifty cover for polar bears who are prone to wander in and out of town uninvited. You’ll find those outsized interlopers in the imaginative drawings of Shuvinai Ashoona, the celebrated third-generation Inuit artist who received a special mention at the 2022 Venice Biennale, and who has a solo show opening at the Perimeter in London this week. It’s not just polar bears: we also get whales, walruses, seals – though not as we know them. Ashoona takes as her inspiration the natural ice-scape and a childhood spent camping and clamming, and on vast sheets of white paper gives them her own fantastical twist. Luminescent fish flop about on ice. Giant squid have human faces for eyes. Dreamlike gatherings take place between shapeshifting creatures.
