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Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: NAPACHIE POOTOOGOOK (1938 -2002) KINNGAIT (CAPE DORSET), My New Accordion, 1989 #23

NAPACHIE POOTOOGOOK (1938 -2002) KINNGAIT (CAPE DORSET)

My New Accordion, 1989 #23
Printmaker: PITSEOLAK NIVIAQSI R.C.A. (1947-2015) KINNGAIT (CAPE DORSET)
lithograph, 45 x 31.75 in. (114 x 80.7 cm)
16/50
LOT 1
ESTIMATE: $3,000 — $5,000
PRICE REALIZED: $3,172.00
26 March 2026
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In addition to its monumental size, My New Accordion is an important work as it one of the only Kinngait prints that was created with the use of more than...
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In addition to its monumental size, My New Accordion is an important work as it one of the only Kinngait prints that was created with the use of more than one preparatory drawing for its execution, as well as for Napachie’s use of a live model to provide the artist with empirical observation to construct her image. In the 1991 exhibition catalogue, In Cape Dorset We Do It This Way, Napachie permitted a glance into this novel creative process, “When I was trying to make the hands, it was very difficult for me because I was looking at a tiny copy. I had to redo it over and over to make it look real. So I had my daughter hold an accordion and that’s how I drew the hands.”


In 1991 and 1992 interviews with the curators Odette Leroux and Marion E. Jackson, Napachie recollected:
It was difficult to depict a person playing the accordion. [...] I felt a great joy in completing it. It required my efforts most compared to all the other drawings I have made (1991). My drawing of accordion playing was a small drawing, so later on I found it too small and then I was trying to copy it to make it look bigger, but I had a hard time making the same one just with a pencil. That was when I was asked to make it look bigger, the I tried my best to draw it again just with the pencil first. Then when I had to do it again on the lithograph, it was really hard work. My first drawing was much smaller than this one. It was very difficult… it is very hard even trying to make a copy of your own work (1992)" (Odette Leroux, ed, Inuit Women Artists [Hull: CMC, 1994], p. 151).


Beyond Napachie’s ambitious draughtsmanship evident in the print, My New Accordion shows Pitseolak Niviaqsi’s mastery of the lithography technique. The ably-applied inks evoke a sense of serenity and joy that pervades the image. The accordion itself, situated centrally on the page in Napachie’s thoughtfully rendered hands, is characterized by an orchestra of colours that harmonize as they wink and wave amongst one another.
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Provenance

Private Collection, Calgary, AB.
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The main office of First Arts Premiers Inc. is located on the ancestral and traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and Huron-Wendat, the original owners and custodians of this land.  Today, it is home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples.

 

 

 

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