Paper Pushers: DRAWINGS FROM QAMANI’TUAQ
Throughout the Canadian Arctic, drawing has remained an especially important medium for artists, who have pursued the genre regularly, and with ingenuity. This exhibition explores the transformation of the medium of drawing in the settlement of Qamani’tuaq by the artists of the first and second generations and the ways in which they pushed the boundaries of artistic production.
For the structure of this exhibition, we are entirely indebted to Marion Jackson, who was the first to present the drawings of the Qamani’tuaq artists with a decidedly academic approach. Jackson first explored Qamani’tuaq drawings in her PhD dissertation in 1985 and in 1995, she expanded on her thesis for the catalogue produced for the MacDonald Stewart Art Centre’s travelling exhibition, Qamanittuaq (Where the River Widens): Drawings by Baker Lake Artists. In addition to providing valuable information on the origins of the settlement of Qamani’tuaq, which we have discussed elsewhere, Jackson suggests a theory of the differences between the first and second generation of artists in Qamani’tuaq, which remains one of the most succinct and inspired ways of looking at the drawings produced in Qamani’tuaq for the period of 1960 to the 2000s. We have chosen to present the works in this exhibition with Jackson’s framework in mind.
Nadine Di Monte