The Textile Museum of Canada’s exhibit, “Printed Textiles from Kinngait Studios,” tells the story of a collective of Inuit artists and printmakers from, well, Kinngait, Nunavut, who created vibrant, graphic textiles during the 1950s and ’60s—a time in which Indigenous people across Canada experienced a violent loss of their land, language, culture and livelihood. These colourful textiles of animals, spirits and stories are feats of innovation and resourcefulness: Since printmaking tools were scarce in the Arctic, the artists improvised with carved linoleum tiles and paper soaked in melted wax. The exhibit juxtaposes the work of Inuit printmakers with that of modern Inuit fashion designers to show how textile traditions shape current trends—and how both the cloth and the culture its patterns depict endure. “Printed Textiles from Kinngait Studios,” the Textile Museum of Canada, until Jan. 19, 2022.
