Sheojuk Etidlooie

Sheojuk Etidlooie was an artist from Akkuatuloulavik, NU an outpost camp on southern Baffin Island near Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU who began producing art late in life and had a short but remarkable career. She lived most of her life on the land before settling in Kinngait in the early 1990s [1]. Though she was a seamstress throughout her life, Etidlooie is predominantly remembered for her drawings and prints [2].

Etidlooie began drawing several years after having settled in Kinngait at a church event where she entered an art contest and was awarded first prize for her drawing qudliq (1993) [3]. In 1994 her first drawing appeared in the Cape Dorset Annual Print Collection. Titled Upinnguaq (1994), it depicted two owls and was published as a lithograph. Etidlooie’s works were published in every following year of the Cape Dorset Annual Print Collection until the end of her career in 1999, the majority of which were reproduced as lithographs or engravings. From 1994 to 1999 she contributed 44 prints to the collection.

Etidlooie’s style was both minimal and abstract. Her most frequent subjects were animals, including dogs, caribou, fish and often birds. Etidlooie visualized figures as loosely naturalistic to outright fantastical depicting creatures originating from Inuit oral traditions and her own imagination [4]. Several motifs are identifiable in her work: ovaloid shapes to represent eyes, nostrils, scales and feathers; birds and caribou balancing on spindly legs with dangling, triangular feet; figures with additional limbs attached in unexpected places; and multiple renditions of splayed hides. Etidlooie is also noted for having favoured aerial and cross-sectional perspectives in her compositions. She was also inclined to illustrate the material representations of human presence such as fishing weirs, sleds, boats and houses. 

Etidlooie’s first solo exhibition titled Sheojuk Etidlooie Original Drawings was held at Feheley Fine Arts, Toronto, ON in 1998. In 1999 Dorset Fine Arts also issued a special anniversary collection of prints that was dedicated to Etidlooie. Her works continue to be exhibited throughout Canada and are held in the permanent collections of the Winnipeg Art Gallery in Winnipeg, MB, the Canadian Museum of History, Gatineau, QC and the Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver, BC.