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JANET KIGUSIUQ (1926 - 2005) |
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Kigusiuq is the eldest daughter of Jessie Oonark. Her siblings are artists Josiah Nuilaalik, Victoria Mamnguqsualuk, Miriam Nanerluk, Mary Yuusipik, Nancy Pukingrnak and William Noah. Kigusiuq was encouraged by her mother to participate in the arts and crafts program as a means of supplementing her family's meagre income. She made tentative efforts at drawing as early as 1967. In 1970, two of Kigusiuq's drawings were selected for the inaugural Baker Lake Print Collection. Since then, she has contributed some thirty drawings to the annual print collection. Her works have been featured in more than eighty national and international group exhibitions. She had her first solo exhibition in 1995 at the Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina. Over the years, her drawings have changed from linear, narrative images with only isolated colour accents to vibrant colour field images celebrating the Arctic landscape. Kigusiuq's works exhibit the influence of 'western' art conventions: recession in space is indicated by overlapping forms and subtle shading indicates volume. Yet time and place are casually compressed in her drawings as consecutive scenes unfold within a single space, and hunter and prey at opposite ends of a vast landscape appear in equal scale as befits their relative importance. Her wallhangings and drawings feature figures with distinctive almond-shaped eyes set with dark lashes. Hers is not a modern world; there is no hint here of the Baker Lake settlement where she has lived for forty years, and no nod to modern arrivals such as ATVs, church spires or telephone wires - though these subjects found their way into her mother's art and the work of her youngest brother, William Noah. In contrast, Kigusiuq's Arctic is filled with dog teams and hand-sewn clothing. Her graphics sweep us along to a place where the caribou are plentiful, the water runs deep and clear, and the hunter's aim is always true. By emphasizing the best of times despite her own memories of famine, death and dislocation, Kigusiuq conjures and enduring sense of 'plenty' throughout her mythical land bathed in the light of paradise.
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