Annie Pootoogook at the Power Plant

Annie Pootoogook, born in 1964, lives and works in Cape Dorset, a remote village of 1,200 with no paved roads located on the tip of Canada's Baffin Island. Remarkably, a quarter of the inhabitants of Cape Dorset, where 98 percent of the population is Inuit, are professional artists.

On view at the Power Plant were 42 drawings, ranging from approximately 20 by 26 inches to 47 by 95 inches, and made between 2000 and 2006. Using colored pencil and marker on paper, Pootoogook outlines forms in black, fills large, flat, sections with bold color, and places simplified shapes on blank backgrounds, reminiscent of more traditional Inuit drawings and prints. Although Arctic artists commonly portray animals, the hunt or nomadic life before settlement, Pootoogook's work shows a shifting Inuit culture, one still tied to custom but influenced by "Southern" products, technology and media. It is no coincidence that she is of the first generation of Inuit raised on television, available in Cape Dorset only since the 1970s.

Pootoogook often addresses the social climate of her surroundings. In Memory of My Life: Breaking Bottles, she depicts herself behind a house, holding two empty liquor bottles above her head, about to smash them into a pile of broken glass. In a published interview, she explained that she broke the bottles, presumably pilfered from residents, in an attempt to control the drinking in Cape Dorset. The mauve vertical lines that delineate the shacklike abode are echoed in the wood paneling and striped wallpaper that can be seen through a window. Oval pebbles on the ground, each drawn individually, add texture to the work. Pootoogook is seen in profile, while the back of another similarly shaped figure enters the house, curiously uninterested in the nearby bottle-breaking. The artist has stated that her imagery is taken from memory and that she creates seemingly continuous narratives from incongruous events in her life. One then wonders whether this second figure might represent Pootoogook from another time or place.

In Cape Dorset Freezer, the largest drawing shown, shoppers wearing parkas congregate in front of a grocery store freezer; labels on the items reveal the outrageous prices of food in a remote village--a frozen Hungry Man Dinner is $6.79. Sometimes Inuit tradition and North American culture seem to coincide seamlessly: in Watching Jerry Springer a girl lies on a plaid sofa watching IV in a room where seafood is displayed on a mat in preparation for the common Inuit practice of eating meals on the floor.

Sexuality is another theme inimitably handled by Pootoogook. In Woman at Her Mirror (Playboy Pose), a nude, wearing only red shoes, pulls her hair up and gazes unselfconsciously at the mirror; behind her a cartoonish Playboy cover hangs on the wall. And in Watching Erotic Film, a couple cuddles lovingly on the bed as porno plays on television.

The complex world Pootoogook inhabits is, perhaps, typified in Holding Boots--a crouching figure in a black-and-white striped shirt leans toward the viewer, holding a mukluk in one hand, a modern rubber boot in the other.--Melissa Kuntz

COPYRIGHT 2007 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning