Shuvinai Ashoona: Mapping Worlds
The Power Plant
TORONTO, ON
As the first retrospective in a contemporary art institution for Kinngait (Cape Dorset)-based Shuvinai Ashoona, Mapping Worlds, guest curated by Dr. Nancy Campbell, features a broad selection of work made by the prolific artist over the last twenty years. Sourced from public and private collections, this major exhibition is slated to travel to the Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery in Montreal, QC, the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, AB and the Vancouver Art Gallery in British Columbia, among others, after its inaugural opening at The Power Plant in Toronto, ON. We caught up with Director Gaëtane Verna to understand what it means to step into Ashoona’s world: What I want people to take from the exhibition is the diversity present in Ashoona’s work and her openness to the world. Within her singular practice, there are so many realms that come to play. She produces expansive drawings where images of globes coexist with animals, sea creatures and humans with otherworldy, alien-like creatures mixed in—all different and unique perspectives on her environment. She also has these moments where she is representing the globe from different perspectives and mapping the landscape. This is really her ability to translate that landscape: the poetry of it and the subtly of it. The message she conveys can be very serious, but is also often comical. It is not a scary world she is presenting, but the earth and all of its facets. – Gaëtane Verna