Both by Kenojuak Ashevak
April 7. Once again, the prompt took me to brand new and far off places. I picked up the gauntlet of being asked to write a self-portrait poem, in which I explain why I am not a particular piece of art and in which I use at least one outlandish comparison, and a strange (and maybe not actually real) fact.
I visited the Canadian Museum of History where I discovered the works of Kenojuak Ashevak (1927 – 2013). Born in Cape Dorset, Nunavut, she is known primarily for her drawings as a graphic artist. She is celebrated as a leading figure of modern Inuit art and one of Canada’s preeminent artists and cultural icons.
I found her work of the 1960’s reminiscent of Heinz Eidelman’s artwork for Yellow Submarine, but she predates that work. I have tried to explain why I could not be one of the subjects.
Her eyes pin me with spears of artic ice.
She demands a response,
She will not take no answer for an answer.
I’m fixed in place, my feet frozen by ankle deep aput,
What can I say to this phantasmagorical bird?
She has spoken and demands that I be heard.
Her radiant Saharan sand tail feathers give the faintest of flutters,
I see her corrupted indigo talons, twitch
As she mutters, “why can you not be more like me”?
I feel as terrified as a Nowhere Man at his surprise birthday party on the Glastonbury main stage
As isolated as a Blue Rabbit eating seaweed on the moon.
If only the woman who lives in the sun could warm my O so cold courage.
I hear my voice say “I love your land with its qana drizzled sunsets”
“and to attend the Narwhal Ball would be a treasure” adds I,
“but I am a man and need to pee, and it would freeze and fall off here if I let it dangle free.”
Kenojuak described her work thus in 1980:
“I just take these things out of my thoughts and out of my imagination, and I don’t really give any weight to the idea of its being an image of something…. I am just concentrating on placing it down on paper in a way that is pleasing to my own eye, whether it has anything to do with subjective reality or not. And that is how I have always tried to make my images, and that is still how I do it, and I haven’t really thought about it any other way than that. That is just my style, and is the way I started and the way I am today.”
I think that’s something we can all learn from.
Missives & Musings 