Art Gallery Reflection- Mapping Worlds
The Mapping Worlds exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery presents a selection of works by Shuvinai Ashoona. She was born in 1961 and grew up in an Inuit community. Her family practiced sculpting, drawing and print-making, which influenced her artistic style. During her childhood, the decline in animal populations, the collapse of the fur trade and the centralization of Nunatsiarmiut forced the Inuit Society to shift from living off the land to moving between seasonal camps and settlement living, where survival relied on wage labour and global economies. This left a personal impact on Shuvinai and is conveyed throughout her drawings. Shuvinai was best known for developing a personal iconography, ranging from natural scenes of her Arctic home to monstrous and fantasy visions that played with human-animal hybrid creatures.
As I went through the exhibit, what stood out for me was how her human-animal hybrid creatures, women birthing worlds and barren landscapes gave a “Baroque style” vibe of shock, wonder and excitement. During the 1520s to 1600s in Italy we witnessed how artists replaced harmony from the Renaissance with dissonance from the Baroque; exaggerated body proportions were also shown through Mannerism. I see parallels of this in Shuvinai’s artistic style. Furthermore, the primary medium for her artwork in this exhibit was the use of pencil crayons, which is an interesting choice as I personally feel this is an intrinsically softer medium and contrasts with the bold nature of her work. Shuvinai’s art was also heavily influenced from the pop culture world of horror films, comic books and television. The use of dark with light is a further an example of how the Baroque style is heavily ingrained within our cultural fabric and revealed in contemporary work.
The art piece I would like to speak in more detail about in this exhibit is titled “To the Print Shop”. It depicts a map of Shuvinai’s path to Kinngait Studios and the various landmarks along the way in what is a relatively busy port city. This brought me back to a class reading on “What Maps Tell Us”. In this reading, it describes how we often assume maps are scientifically objective tools that help us get from point A to point B and that they reveal truths about the world we live in. In fact, they are subjective and reveal narratives about the period they were produced or the creator of the map. In this case, Shuvinai shows us a bird’s eye view of the Kinngait Studios where she often went to produce art. Her choice of showing us this perspective could highlight her holistic way of viewing the world, which is consistent with the traditional Indigenous belief system where all components of life are interconnected. At the centre of the drawing we also see overlap drawings of planet earth. The cyclical shape of earth and the overlapping circles again reinforces interconnection and the cycle of life.
The most successful maps are selective and leave information that is most important to the creator and exclude details that are irrelevant to the narrative. Shuvinai illustrates small human characters throughout the drawing. The ratio of the size of the humans compared to the drawings of planet earth at the centre is not realistic and illustrates a symbolic form of art rather than realism, which we first saw in the Medieval Period. It’s interesting how maps have preserved their symbolic nature throughout the ages! The miniature humans are all wearing coats that would have fit the style and climate of the time, revealing Shuvinai’s close ties to her Inuit heritage. We also see an interesting miniature mermaid on the left centre corner of the drawing. This is the only fantasy character we see in the entire drawing. In the early Renaissance, we see artists begin inserting themselves into the painting to involve the audience. One wonders whether this was Shuvinai’s way of pulling the audience into her narrative through dissonance or perhaps this is a depiction of herself as a mermaid to symbolize her close ties to nature and the human world.
“To the Print Shop” was a personally relevant piece for me because I’ve always had an interest in maps and planet earth. I am in the midst of creating a portfolio for my eventual application for a Masters of Art in Psychotherapy degree and I would like to create a tactile map of my journey in life thus far, especially my journey in artistic pursuits. I can definitely use this drawing for inspiration. The class reading on “What Maps Tell Us” was also very insightful. I especially like how map can be used to portray a narrative.
