Fantastic Kenojuak Ashevak
42 works from the Claude Baud collection

Curator : Catherine Bédard
An exhibition produced by the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris 

Exhibition presented from September 12 to 29 at Espace Cœur de Ville, Vincennes, as part of the America Festival’s 10th edition (September 22-25, 2022)

At the invitation of the America Festival, and to celebrate its 20th anniversary, the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris has reconstructed a historic exhibition that paid tribute, ten years ago, to a major artist of contemporary Canadian art, Inuit artist Kenojuak Ashevak. The exhibition also showcases part of the Claude Baud collection, an exceptional French private collection of Inuit art.  Kenojuak Ashevak, who passed away on January 8, 2013 at the age of 85, is associated with the renowned Inuit art cooperative of Cape Dorset, located on the southwestern tip of Baffin Island, Nunavut.  

Kenojuak Ashevak was one of the best-known artists of the artistic capital of the Far North since the 1960s, Cape Dorset. This fame is due to the distinctiveness of her art, whose fantastic dimension is not strictly linked to the shamanic world and to the bestiary of the local tradition but blossoms according to a more personal, admirably free aesthetic.

With this monographic exhibition, a collection of works unique in Europe and a slightly expanded version of the original 2013 exhibition, the Canadian Cultural Centre wishes to give an individual face to what is too often promoted as a homogeneous and strictly communal entity under the name of “Inuit art”. The exhibition Fantastic Kenojuak Ashevak brings together 42 works from the private collection of Claude Baud who contributed for decades, with his gallery L’Iglou, in Douai, to the promotion of the sculptures and prints of many artists by means of multiple exhibitions in France.