Annie Pootoogook
/Cape Dorset, Nunavut
B. 1969-2016
Annie Pootoogook was born in 1969 in Cape Dorset, Nunavut. She came from a long line of artists and began drawing in 1997. Annie’s drawings reflected her way of life as a contemporary female artist living and working in Canada’s far north. Ranging in expression from the apparently mundane and everyday to the personal and brutally intimate, Annie’s work is well known for her innovative and honest style. Her untimely passing in 2016 was a huge loss to the community of Cape Dorset and the new wave of contemporary Inuit art.
Annie had her first one person show in 2002 and was represented in several successful exhibitions during her career. She spent the summer of 2006 in Dufftown, Scotland where she was artist-in-residence at the Glenfiddich Distillery “Spirit off Creativity” program. Following a solo show at the The Power Plant gallery in Toronto, she went on to win the prestigious Sobey Arts Award in October and subsequently went on to exhibit at the Basel Art Fair and Documenta 12 in Kassel Germany. Her drawings are in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Toronto and several other notable institutions. Annie was the subject of a critically acclaimed documentary film by Site Media and her work has been shown in numerous public galleries in Canada and around the world.
