Irene Avaalaaqiaq: Myth and Reality

Judith Nasby
McGill Queen’s University Press 2002
Softcover, 121 pages (36 colour photographs, 16 black and white photographs)

$35.00 CDN

This publication followed the MacDonald Stewart Art Centre’s acquisition of several significant artworks by Avaalaaqiaq, as well as the celebration of an Honorary Doctorate presented to Avaalaaqiaq by the University of Guelph in 1999. This senior Baker Lake artist is a prolific storyteller who filters traditional spirit stories from her grandmother into modern artistic creations. The catalogue features the artist’s prints, drawings and wall hangings and provides detailed biographical information based on interviews and Avaalaaqiaq’s memoirs of her life in the Canadian Arctic over the past half century.