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JANET KIGUSIUQ (1926-2005) QAMANI'TUAQ (BAKER LAKE)
People, Bears, and Dogs, 1994stroud, felt, embroidery floss, and cotton thread, 52.5 x 52.5 in (133.3 x 133.3 cm)
signed, "ᑭᒍᓯᐅ".Janet Kigusiuq was an accomplished artist in several media, with a style that evolved over the decades. Her early drawings and prints exhibit linear, narrative images featuring minimal, isolated colour...Janet Kigusiuq was an accomplished artist in several media, with a style that evolved over the decades. Her early drawings and prints exhibit linear, narrative images featuring minimal, isolated colour accents, depicting groups of people engaged in daily life and traditional activities. By 1990 Kigusiuq was clearly favouring larger blocks of colour, and fewer, larger human and animal figures. In People, Bears, and Dogs, we are treated to her distinctive figures presented with a grander and bolder vision. The accent seems to be on display rather than narrative. The central man, almost life-size, faces the viewer with a smile and an outfit adorned with carefully aligned fly stitches. The couples on either side of him sport coordinated outfits; Kigusiuq’s penchant for skewing perspectives and scale in her work leaves us wondering whether they are following the man or simply viewing him as we do. Likewise, the two bears stare at each other as much as they do the man, who is seemingly oblivious to their presence. While most of the dogs also face the man, the two dogs at lower right appear to be having a conversation with each other, oblivious of the great man in their midst, or perhaps discussing him! What remains an enigma to us is whether the man is literally a giant, or simply important or special in some way that eludes us? Is he perhaps Kigusiuq’s late husband Mark Uqayuittuq, or the legendary wanderer Kiviuq?
References: For some biographical information about the artist see Ingo Hessel, Arctic Spirit: Inuit Art from the Albrecht Collection at the Heard Museum (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre / Phoenix: Heard Museum, 2006), p. 134-135. For some biographical information about the artist in relation to her work in textiles, see Katharine W. Fernstrom and Anita E. Jones, Northern Lights: Inuit Textile Art from the Canadian Arctic, (Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1994), p. 44. For further notes on her work on paper, prime examples of Kigusiuq’s drawings from all periods of her career are reproduced in Cynthia Waye, The Urge to Abstraction: The graphic art of Janet Kigusiuq, (Toronto: Museum of Inuit Art, 2008).
Provenance
Collection of John and Joyce Price, Seattle.