Elizabeth Angrnaqquaq


Elizabeth Angrnaqquaq was an innovative Canadian Inuk textile artist active from the 1970s to early 2000s. Angnaqquaq's work explores textile creations while experimenting with non-traditional methods. Her style has been described as painterly for the way in which she fills the space between her figures and animals with embroidery.

Early life

Angrnaqquaq was born in 1916 in the Northwest Territories, Canada in a traditional nomadic camp. She and her younger siblings were raised by their father after their mother died young. She lived a traditional Inuit lifestyle until the early she and her family moved to Baker Lake, Northwest Territories in the 1950s to avoid poverty and starvation. Her son Harold worked at the sewing center in the late 1960s. In Baker Lake, Angrnaqquaq explored textile and mixed-media art practices where she used stitching as a method for creating figures in fabrics. Angrnaqquaq obtained fabrics through Jack and Sheila Butler, visiting art advisors to the Baker Lake region.

Career

After establishing an art practice in which Angrnaqquaq explored figures of landscapes, animals, and textures through herringbone stitching, she began showing her works at Art Institutions around Canada. After establishing her art practice in textiles throughout Canada, Angenaqquaq was commissioned to create a public art commission for the Post Office at Wakefield, Ontario through the Public Works Department in 1976. Her work has been exhibited throughout North America, specifically in Toronto, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and Winnipeg in both private and public commissions.
Angrnaqquaq worked well into her 80s, producing her last work in 2000. The work, entitled Animals and People, explores bright colours and the situation of animal forms within an abstracted landscape. Animals and People was rendered in the same herringbone stitch which Angrnaqquaq was known for.
Angrnaqquaq died in 2003.

Permanent collections