ᖃᓪᓗᓈᖅᑕᐃᑦ ᓯᑯᓯᓛᕐᒥᑦ
Printed Textiles from Kinngait Studios
In November 2016, Textile Museum of Canada Curatorial Director Sarah Quinton and I, along with former staff member Anna Richard, were invited to Dorset Fine Arts (DFA) by Marketing Manager William Huffman to view a recently rediscovered collection of textiles. With our curiosity piqued, we made our way over to the DFA offices in the east end of Toronto. We arrived to find dozens of pieces of printed cloth featuring patterns by well-known Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, artists. Produced over 60 years ago, designs by Pudlo Pudlat (1916–1992), Pitseolak Ashoona, OC, RCA (1904–1983), Parr (1893–1969) and others remained vibrant, engaging and expressive of the deeply felt connection between the artists and their environment. We were immediately captivated and drawn to learn more about the story behind the cloth.
Though Kinngait Studios, operated by the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative (WBEC), is recognized for its successful printmaking program and for the originality of its prints, little has been recorded about the remarkable hand-printed textile initiative that took place in the studios during the 1950s and 60s. The bold, graphic cotton and linen fabrics are a physical record of a short-lived experiment undertaken in the early days of WBEC, when Kinngait’s now-famous print program was just beginning.
Made for interior décor during a period when artist-designed textiles were popular in North America and Europe, these midcentury designs depict legends, stories and traditional ways of life. Unlike the stone sculptures and prints also created during this period, the place and importance of
these printed textiles in the history of Inuit cultural heritage has yet to be fully recognized.
ᖃᓪᓗᓈᖅᑕᐃᑦ ᓯᑯᓯᓛᕐᒥᑦ Printed Textiles from Kinngait Studios traces the development and impact of this initiative on the history of Kinngait’s visual culture and explores its continued relevance through the work of Inuit artists and fashion designers today.
In 2017 the Textile Museum reached an agreement with our project partner, the WBEC, and the collection of nearly 200 textiles was transferred to the Museum as a long-term loan. As stewards of these fabrics, we have embraced the responsibility of creating broad access to the collection in the North and the South, developing a touring exhibition, catalogue, online resources, educational tools and programming, while ensuring ongoing community consultation and engagement.
Through extensive archival research and conversations with many who are familiar with the initiative, the story of these cloths began to take shape. In 1956, fabric printing experiments were initiated by James Houston and promoted by co-op arts adviser Terry Ryan in the 1960s. By 1966, the marketing of the fabrics across Canada promoted their use to interior designers and architects as drapery in institutional and commercial settings, with the aim to make them available to the public in the future. Newspapers reported on these textiles with great enthusiasm, the fabrics won a Design ’67 Award and were exhibited at Expo ’67 in Montreal, QC. Despite the positive response, the fabrics did not sell well and the fabric printing studio in Kinngait ceased production in 1968.
This set off another period of experimentation as the fabrics continued to be commercially printed in the South and the use of the designs was licensed out—a practice that continues today.
Involving the Kinngait community has been essential in the development of this exhibition, and we’ve relied on community insights to identify authorship, establish provenance and to understand the crucial contexts of this experimental period of printmaking. I was fortunate to visit Kinngait in 2018 and again in 2019 with curatorial project coordinator Alexandria Holm. Through community gatherings and informal conversations, I was able to share our research, images of the fabrics and historic photographs with artists, printmakers and community members who brought valuable new insights. After seeing the images of the 60-year-old fabrics for the first time, several participants recognized works made by their relatives and spoke with enthusiasm about their family members. Others generously shared memories and observations that helped to unfold and document the story of these cloths.
We learned the designs themselves were typically crafted by the printmakers, led by Kananginak Pootoogook, RCA (1935– 2010), who selected motifs from drawings artists brought to the co-op for sale, and translated them into patterns for yardage production. Parr’s Proud Geese, screen printed on cotton sateen twill, demonstrates the effective use of a single graphic image repeated in ver tical columns in alternate colours to create a striking design. In the
gallery, Parr’s 1963 stonecut print on paper,
Geese, Dog, and Walrus, is displayed adjacent to the fabric, showing the relationship between the original image and the fabric. A design by Paunichea (1920–1968) is handprinted on unbleached cotton likely using a stencil and brush technique—probably produced before the printmakers adopted the more efficient silkscreen method in 1963. In this experimental piece the printmaker’s hand is visible; there are smudges of colourant and some of the repeat designs are unevenly placed, indicating a process of trial and error as printmakers persevered to produce a marketable product.
The exhibition design is intended to reflect the context and time period of this textile printing initiative. The fabrics were initially targeted directly to architects and public works officials as the scale of the patterns made them suitable for use in large spaces. Therefore it was important to display them to fully maximize the effect of the designs. Originally, bolts of the printed yardage would have been rolled on tubes for sale; in the exhibition we use cardboard tubes to drape the fabrics from the ceiling to the gallery floor.
These printed textiles have important antecedents in Inuit culture. Beginning in the 1950s “skin pictures” or hangings, decorated with appliquéd images made of seal or caribou skin, were among the graphic precursors to printmaking. We have installed an example from the Textile Museum’s permanent collection alongside textiles from other later fabric initiatives including an appliqué wall hanging by Janet Nungnik (b. 1954) from Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake), NU, and batiks from Puvirnituq, Nunavik, QC— demonstrating the far reaching impact of the original textile program on artists in other communities.
Elsewhere in the gallery a silkscreen from Kinngait is displayed alongside its matching fabric, while stencil brushes are on view opposite a photograph taken in 1959 showing James Houston and printmakers Osuitok Ipeelee, RCA (1922–2005), Kananginak Pootoogook and Lukta Qiatsuk (1928–2004) at work stencilling fabric in the studio. Other historic photographs animate spaces throughout the exhibition where the textiles appear in several contexts: newspaper articles, at Expo ’67, modelled as clothing in an Arctic fashion shoot and fashioned into garments worn by Kenojuak Ashevak, CC, ON, RCA (1927–2013) and Mialia Jaw (1934–2006) in photographs by Norman Hallendy. An interactive digital app presents interviews with Studios’ artists Ningiukulu Teevee, Johnny Pootoogook, Ooloosie Saila and Malaija Pootoogook, along with videos and stories relating to subjects illustrated in the textiles. And the voices of the artists, co-op staff and community members including former Kinngait Studios manager Jimmy Manning and curatorial consultant Nakasuk Alariaq are further integrated into the narrative through the use of quotes on the gallery walls and in didactic materials.
Inuit fashion designers Tarralik Duffy of Ugly Fish, Martha Kyak of InukChic and Nooks Lindell of Hinaani Design offer contemporary perspectives on the textiles. Each are establishing brands that blend Inuit cultural heritage with contemporary fashion, creating innovative ways to represent their culture. Inspired by the Kinngait textiles, each created original printed fabric designs for the exhibition, and, in the case of Kyak and Lindell, these were made into garments.
When the designers viewed the Kinngait textiles for the first time, they expressed an immediate connection with the works. Kyak observed, “Looking at these images on the fabrics… you can tell how everything they knew about the world is connected and see their strong worldview.” Like the Kinngait artists of 60 years ago, this new generation draws inspiration for their own experiments with printed textiles from their culture. Duffy produces leggings printed with syllabics
“to preserve our language and keep it visible through fashion,” while Lindell describes how his designs “are inspired by our wildlife, our land and our culture… and then taking that inspiration and giving it a modern twist.” Their works speak to the continued significance of these early printed fabrics and their relevance today.
We hope that ᖃᓪᓗᓈᖅᑕᐃᑦ ᓯᑯᓯᓛᕐᒥᑦ
Printed Textiles from Kinngait Studios will shine a light on the story of this innovative textile printing initiative. This exhibition was made possible through the collaboration and contributions of many who have advised, guided and supported the project. These powerful graphic representations of the natural world express Inuit values and culture, while preserving Inuit knowledge, oral histories and legends, and demonstrate the importance of printed fabrics in the ongoing evolution of Inuit graphic arts.