Kinngait (Cape Dorset)

Home Of The West Baffin Eskimo Co Operative And The Cape Dorset Annual Print Collection, Released Every Year Since 1959 The Longest Running Annual Print Collection In Canada · Kinngait, Nunavut

A hamlet of about fourteen hundred people on an island off south-west Baffin produces a larger share of the world's best known Inuit art than anywhere else, and has done since 1959, when the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative released its first annual print collection. It has released one every year since - the longest-running annual print collection in Canada - and the names that came out of it are the canon: Kenojuak Ashevak, whose Enchanted Owl went onto a postage stamp, Pitseolak Ashoona, Kiugak Ashoona, and more recently Annie Pootoogook and Shuvinai Ashoona, whose work hangs in galleries from Toronto to Venice. An extraordinary proportion of residents draw, print or carve. Since 2018 the work has been done in the purpose-built Kenojuak Cultural Centre. Across a tidal channel you can walk at low tide lie the stone remains the entire Dorset culture was named after.

Kinngait, Dorset Island, Foxe Peninsula, Baffin Island, Kinngait, Nunavut, Canada

Kinngait is a lived-in hamlet with no gate or admission. THE KENOJUAK CULTURAL CENTRE AND PRINT SHOP generally opens on weekdays with free or donation gallery entry, but IT IS A WORKING STUDIO AND ACCESS TO PRODUCTION AREAS IS NOT GUARANTEED - contact the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative before building a trip around watching printmaking. Access is by scheduled flight from Iqaluit; THERE IS NO ROAD, and weather cancels flights regularly, so build in spare days. MALLIKJUAQ IS REACHED ON FOOT ACROSS A TIDAL CHANNEL - check the tide in both directions. The annual print collection is released each autumn through southern galleries.

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