While it is accurate to state that Annie Pootoogook took the art world by storm with her frank and sometimes sombre depictions of contemporary life in the Arctic, a number of her works are infused with humour. The choice of an everyday object such as a pair of men’s briefs as a subject worthy of a “case” study is, in and of itself, playful and a bit risqué, but with a title like Brief Case the artist sets up viewers for additional hilarity once we consider that a “briefcase” is usually thought of as a sophisticated and traditionally masculine carrying container. The pun is, of course, intended. But there’s more. One could even argue that by colouring the underpants in a palette of pastel shades usually associated with femininity, Pootoogook has turned Brief Case into a light-hearted subversion of gender expectations. One of four prints from her inaugural inclusion in the 2005 Kinngait print collection, Brief Case signalled the satirical, dare we say cheeky, tone of many of Pootoogook’s future works.

References: Image reproduced in Leslie Boyd Ryan, Cape Dorset Prints: A Retrospective (San Francisco: Pomegranate, 2007), p. 94; Christine Lalonde and Leslie Boyd Ryan, Uuturautiit: Cape Dorset Celebrates 50 Years of Printmaking (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2009), p. 48, cat. no. 51, as Briefcase. Ken Mantel et al., Tuvaq: Inuit Art and the Modern World (Bristol, UK: Sansom and Company Ltd., 2010), fig. 240, p. 227, as Briefcase; Brief Case was the subject of an article written by Elizabeth Logue and published in the Inuit Art Quarterly in the Fall 2017 p. 18-19.