Ningiukulu Teevee

Book excerpt: Ningiukulu Teevee thinks in pictures, and drawing is her language. She is a soft-spoken storyteller, but her message is clear and strong, and with it she is expanding the narrative of the North, breaking new ground for Inuit art. Teevee hails from Cape Dorset, home to a multigenerational community of artists and the Kinngait Studios, the longest continually operating print studios in Canada. Her inventive images first appeared in the studios' annual collection of limited-edition prints in 2004 and have been represented every year since. Her work is rooted in respect for traditional Inuit culture and an abiding love of family, but along with artists such as Tim Pitsiulak and Annie Pootoogook, Teevee has proven unafraid of pushing artistic boundaries. In drawings alive with mischievous charm or weighted by a grittier reality, she often merges traditional Inuit art with contemporary aesthetics, revealing positive and negative changes to life in Arctic communities. In 2009, Teevee's illustrated children's book, Alego, was shortlisted for a Governor General's award. In 2017 Ningiukulu Teevee: Kinngait Stories, curated by the Winnipeg Art Gallery, opened at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, Dithe first major retrospective of Teevee's career to date. Ningiukulu Teevee: Drawings and Prints from Cape Dorset is the first monograph on the artist's work. Presented here are more than eighty reproductions and photographs, with critical context provided by Leslie Boyd, former director of Dorset Fine Arts, Toronto. Teevee's art has been exhibited widely and is in collections around the world, among them the Art Gallery of Ontario, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, and the National Gallery of Canada.