Soon after Annie Pootoogook started exhibiting her work, her drawings began to attract tremendous public attention, especially after a landmark solo exhibition at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, in 2006. Her work has subsequently been shown in major solo exhibitions, including Annie Pootoogook: Cutting Ice, a retrospective at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, Ontario, that opened in 2017, as well as several group exhibitions.
Major Solo Exhibitions
2003
May–June, Moving Forward: Works on Paper by Annie Pootoogook, Feheley Fine Arts, Toronto. Exhibition catalogue.
2006
June, Annie Pootoogook—Reflections, Feheley Fine Arts, Toronto.
June–September, Annie Pootoogook, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto. Exhibition catalogue.
2007
January–March, Annie Pootoogook, Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Alberta College of Art and Design (now Alberta University of the Arts), Calgary. Exhibition catalogue. This exhibition travelled to several Canadian cities as well as the National Museum of the American Indian, New York (2009–10).
2011
August–December, Annie Pootoogook: Kinngait Compositions, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, Kingston. Exhibition catalogue.
2017–18
September–February, Annie Pootoogook: Cutting Ice, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, Ontario. Exhibition catalogue.
Selected Group Exhibitions
2001
The Unexpected, Feheley Fine Arts, Toronto.
2005
Unique Visions, Feheley Fine Arts, Toronto.
November, Windows on Kinngait: The Drawings of Napachie Pootoogook and Annie Pootoogook, Feheley Fine Arts, Toronto. Exhibition catalogue.
2006
January–May, In the Shadow of the Sun: Sami and Inuit Art, Art Gallery of Hamilton.
December, Ashoona: Third Wave, Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton.
2007
June–July, Annie Pootoogook, Shuvinai Ashoona, Siassie Kenneally: 3 Cousins, Feheley Fine Arts, Toronto. Exhibition catalogue.
June–September, documenta 12, Kassel, Germany. Exhibition catalogue.
2008
November–December, Breaking Ground: New Oil Stick Drawings from Cape Dorset, Feheley Fine Arts, Toronto.
2009
Shuvinai Ashoona & Annie Pootoogook: Recent Drawings, Feheley Fine Arts, Toronto.
May, Narrative: Contemporary Inuit Prints from Cape Dorset, Marion Scott Gallery, Vancouver.
July–August, Shuvinai Ashoona & Annie Pootoogook, Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain, Montreal.
September–October, Women of the North: Seen in Sculptures and Prints, Arctic Artistry, Chappaqua, New York.
November–December, New Views on Old Traditions, The Guild Shop, Toronto.
2009–10
October–January, Uuturautiit: Cape Dorset Celebrates 50 Years of Printmaking, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
October–January, Nunannguaq: In the Likeness of the Earth, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, Ontario.
2010
June–July, North Meets South, Feheley Fine Arts, Toronto.
2010–11
November–January, Ijurnaqtut: Whimsy, Wit and Humor in Inuit Art, Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa.
2011
April, Inuit Modern: The Samuel and Esther Sarick Collection, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Exhibition catalogue.
June, Dorset Large: Large Scale Drawings from the Kinngait Studios, Feheley Fine Arts, Toronto.
August, Memory for the Future, Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain, Montreal.
2011–12
December–February, Women in Charge: Inuit Contemporary Women Artists, Museo Nazionale Preistorica Etnografica “Luigi Pigorini,” Rome, Italy.
2012
February–March, Colour, Marion Scott Gallery, Vancouver.
April–July, Polar Shift, Museum London, London, Ontario.
November–December, Past Sobey Award Winners—A Selection from the National Gallery of Canada Collection, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto.
2012–13
May–April, Oh, Canada, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA. Exhibition catalogue.
December–May, Telling Stories: Inuit Art from Cape Dorset, Toronto Pearson International Airport (Terminal 1), Toronto.
2013
April–June, Dorset Seen, Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa. Exhibition catalogue.
May–September, Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Exhibition catalogue.
2014–15
September–January, Northern Exposure, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax.
October–January, Inuit Ullumi: Inuit Today, The Rooms, St. John’s.
2015
July–October, BIG BANG, Galerie SAW Gallery, Ottawa.
September–October, Fifteen Years: Kinngait 2000–2015, Feheley Fine Arts, Toronto.
2016
August–September, Neon NDN: Indigenous Pop Art, Galerie SAW Gallery, Ottawa.
2016–17
November–January, Dear Life, Art Gallery of Guelph.
2017–18
June–January, Akunnittinni: A Kinngait Family Portrait, National Museum of the American Indian, New York.
2018
July–October, Beautiful World, Where Are You?, Tate Liverpool, U.K.
2019
September–October, Shifting Geographies, University of Alberta Museums, Edmonton.
Primary Sources
The McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, Ontario, holds the largest public collection of Annie Pootoogook’s drawings. Another significant collection is represented on the website of collectors Stephanie Comer and Rob Craigie, Expanding Inuit (https://www.expandinginuit.com/). Annie’s prints were included in the Cape Dorset Annual Print Collection in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008. Before that, in 2003, Feheley Fine Arts commissioned a print that was not included in the Cape Dorset Annual Print Collection but was included in its 2003 catalogue. The Inuit Artists’ Print Database (https://www.gallery.ca/inuit_artists/home.jsp?Lang=EN) includes catalogue information for nine of the artist’s prints.
Critical Texts
Allen, Jan. Annie Pootoogook: Kinngait Compositions. Kingston, Ontario: Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2011. Exhibition catalogue.
Buergel, Roger M., and Ruth Noack. Documenta Kassel 12. Cologne: Taschen, 2007. Exhibition catalogue.
Campbell, Nancy. Annie Pootoogook. Toronto: The Power Plant, 2006. Exhibition catalogue.
———. Annie Pootoogook: Cutting Ice. Toronto: McMichael Canadian Art Collection and Goose Lane, 2017. Exhibition catalogue.
———. “Cracking the Glass Ceiling: Contemporary Inuit Drawing.” PhD dissertation, York University, 2017.
———. Inuit Trilogy: Noise Ghost and Other Stories. Toronto: Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, University of Toronto, 2016. Exhibition catalogue.
Campbell, Nancy, with Wayne Baerwaldt and Deborah Root. Annie Pootoogook. Calgary: Alberta College of Art and Design, 2007. Exhibition catalogue.
Feheley, Patricia. “Modern Language: The Art of Annie Pootoogook.” Inuit Art Quarterly 19, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 10–15.
Igloliorte, Heather. “Annie Pootoogook: Depicting Arctic Modernity in Contemporary Inuit Art.” Artlink 37, no. 2 (June 2017): 56–61.
———. “Annie Pootoogook: 1969–2016.” Canadian Art Online, September 27, 2016.
Lefebvre, Haidee. “Annie Pootoogook’s Visual Representations of Girlhood: Acknowledging and Recognizing the Presence of Inuit Girls.” PhD dissertation, McGill University, 2019.
———. “In Contrast: Media Coverage and Annie Pootoogook’s Drawings of Sexual Violence and Sexual Happiness.” In Disrupting Shameful Legacies: Girls and Young Women Speak Back through the Arts to Address Sexual Violence, edited by Claudia Mitchell and Relebohile Moletsane, 193–214. Boston: Brill Sense, 2018.
Markonish, Denise, ed. Oh, Canada: Contemporary Art from North America. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. Exhibition catalogue.
Root, Deborah. “Inuit Art and the Limits of Authenticity.” Inuit Art Quarterly 23, no. 2 (Summer 2008): 18–26.
Sinclair, James. “Breaking New Ground: The Graphic Work of Shuvinai Ashoona, Janet Kigusiuq, Victoria Mamnguqsualuk and Annie Pootoogook.” Inuit Art Quarterly 19, nos. 3 and 4 (Fall / Winter 2004): 58–61.
Tomaszewska, Karolina. “Autobiographic Narrative in the Drawings of Napachie and Annie Pootoogook.” MA thesis, Concordia University, 2012.
Vorano, Norman David. “Inuit Art in the Qallunaat World: Modernism, Museums and the Popular Imaginary, 1949–1961.” PhD dissertation, University of Rochester, 2007.
Film, Audio, Video
Connolly, Marcia, dir. Annie Pootoogook: The Work of an Inuit Contemporary Artist. Siteline Media Inc., 2006, 23 min and 50 sec.
Mangaard, Annette, dir. Riding Light into the World: The Art of Kinngait Studios. Site Media Inc., 2010, 66 min.
Further Reading
Auger, Emily E. The Way of Inuit Art: Aesthetics and History in and beyond the Arctic. Vancouver: MacFarland and Company Inc., 2005.
Banerjee, Subhankar, ed. Arctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2012.
Berlo, Janet Catherine. “Drawing (upon) the Past: Negotiating Identities in Inuit Graphic Arts Production.” In Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds, edited by Ruth B. Phillips and Christopher Burghard Steiner, 178–93. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
———. “Inuit Women and Graphic Arts: Female Creativity and Its Cultural Context.” The Canadian Journal of Native Studies 9, no. 2 (1989): 293–315.
Blodgett, Jean. In Cape Dorset We Do It This Way: Three Decades of Inuit Printmaking. Kleinburg, Ontario: McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 1991.
———., ed. Three Women, Three Generations: Drawings by Pitseolak Ashoona, Napatchie Pootoogook [sic] and Shuvinai Ashoona. Kleinburg, Ontario: McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 1999. Exhibition catalogue.
Boyd, Leslie, and Sandra Dyck. Dorset Seen. Ottawa: Carleton University Art Gallery, 2017. Exhibition catalogue.
Crandall, Richard C. Inuit Art: A History. 2nd edition. Jefferson, NC: MacFarland, 2000.
Harney, Elizabeth, and Ruth Phillips, eds. Mapping Modernisms: Art, Indigeneity, Colonialism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2019.
Hill, Greg A., Candice Hopkins, and Christine Lalonde. Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2013. Exhibition catalogue.
Igloliorte, Heather. “Amplification and Empowerment: Cultural Sovereignty in Inuit Nunangat.” In INSURGENCE / RESURGENCE, edited by Jaimie Isaac and Julie Nagam, 34–48. Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2018. Exhibition catalogue.
———. “Inuit Artistic Expression as Cultural Resilience.” In Response, Responsibility, and Renewal: Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Journey, edited by Gregory Younging, Jonathan Dewar, and Mike DeGagne, 123–36. Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2009.
Jessup, Lynda, Erin Morton, and Kirsty Robertson, eds. Negotiations in a Vacant Lot: Studying the Visual in Canada. Kingston, Ontario: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014.
Lalonde, Christine, et. al. Uuturautiit: Cape Dorset Celebrates 50 Years of Printmaking. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2009. Exhibition catalogue.
Leroux, Odette. Inuit Women Artists: Voices from Cape Dorset. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1995.
Lutz, Maija M. Hunters, Carvers, and Collectors: The Chauncey C. Nash Collection of Inuit Art. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum Press, 2012.
Mantel, Ken. Tuvaq: Inuit Art and the Modern World. Bristol, UK: Sansom & Company Limited, 2010.
Monani, Salma, and Joni Adamson, eds. Ecocriticism and Indigenous Studies: Conversations from Earth to Cosmos. New York: Routledge, 2016.
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