Kenojuak Ashevak

A pioneer of modern Inuit art, Kenojuak Ashevak played a large role in bringing such work to the world stage. Crafting fluid carvings and graphic works on paper that displayed a deep reverence for Northern Canada’s natural landscape and animal inhabitants, Kenojuak, as she is always called, became famous for The Enchanted Owl, a colorful, stylized iconic 1960 print that would later appear on a Canadian postage stamp. The artist was part of a mid-century government program that encouraged the residents of the Northwest Territories to take up the arts as a way of boosting the local economy after the decline of the fur industry; Kenojuak and her peers subsequently formed a group called the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative to market their work.