Janet Kigusiuq

Canadian, 1926–2005

Upiknivik (Spring Camp), 1992

coloured pencil, graphite on paper

(a) Drawing: 57 x 76.1 cm; (b) Drawing: 76 x 56.9 cm

Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery

G-93-31 ab

Categories:

Drawing, Inuit

Janet Kigusiuq was one of the talented children of renowned Baker Lake artist Jessie Oonark. Kigusiuq’s late drawing style is unusually painterly, even abstract, when compared to the more linear and narrative style of many other Inuit graphic artists. She covers the paper with colour, offering an impressionistic vision suggestive of her personal interaction with the land. The two WAG drawings form a diptych that documents the landscape where her family often camped in the spring—a place that held great significance for her. The flowing river with a waterfall is important as a source of fish, while the land through which it runs is home to the caribou, her family’s major source of meat.