Stories old as time Nunavut-born graphic artist Ningiukulu Teevee gives traditional tales a cheeky twist By: Jen Zoratti Posted: 4:48 PM CDT Wednesday, May. 6, 2026 Last Modified: 9:47 AM CDT Friday, May. 15, 2026 Updates

Ningiukulu Teevee is a graphic artist. But she is, first and foremost, a storyteller.

In her drawings and prints, the award-winning Kinngait (Cape Dorset), Nunavut-born and -based artist offers vividly imaginative interpretations of traditional Inuit tales that have been passed down for generations; oral stories made legible in her poignant and playful style.

She tells stories of the legendary adventurer Kiviuq and the sea goddess Sedna.

She revisits, often, the beloved legend of the Owl and the Raven, which explains how the raven came to have inky black feathers and the snowy owl came to be spotted.

She draws Arctic animals bursting with personality, especially her lumpy, bumpy walruses, which have twice graced the cover of Inuit Art Quarterly.

Many of her works are imbued with a cheeky sense of humour.

In a 2019 coloured-pencil-on-black paper work, a man is constructing an igloo, the walls of which give way to a pattern of very familiar blocks. The title: For Some, Lego Would Be Easier.

These are just some of the tales in Ningiukulu Teevee: Stories from Kinngait, a new solo show at WAG-Qaumajuq.

Curated by Darlene Coward Wight, curator of Inuit art at the gallery, this exhibition features 57 works from the Art in Practice Collection of Cholakis Dental Group, the largest corporate collection of Teevee’s work in the world.

“My work comes from stories that I have heard, that are unwritten, only spoken, and kept by few,” said Teevee in a media release.

“The first storyteller that caught my attention was Mialia Jaw. She came to a classroom to tell her stories. Listening to her fed my imagination. It has led me to win the Inuit Art Foundation Kenojuak Ashevak Memorial Award and travel to places such as Sydney, Australia and London, England — exciting opportunities to learn, and teach those who want to learn.”

In 2024, a smaller version of this show was presented at Canada House in London, England, in partnership with the High Commission of Canada.

And Teevee’s Owl and Raven images are currently being projected onto the iconic sails of the Sydney Opera House every evening at dusk, alongside work by First Nations Australian artist Mervyn Street as part of a collaboration between the Biennale of Sydney, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain and the Sydney Opera House. They will remain on view for a year.

“Her imagination is so amazing,” Coward Wight says.

“She just brings to life the traditional stories, many she learned when she was in school, and also stories of everyday life. There’s a work about going to her grandparents’ house on the ice in May, and all of a sudden the ice started breaking up.”

The past and present often collide in Teevee’s work.

She frequently tells stories of women who transform into various animals to escape abuse.

In the 2016 stone-cut print Neutralizer, a bird’s scrawny, clawlike foot is still suspended in the strappy black stiletto of her previous human form, its “Neutralizer” tag — a play on the women’s footwear brand Naturalizer — visible on the insole.

It’s a modern shoe, Teevee once explained to Coward Wight, because violence against Inuit women remains a modern problem.

Many of the works on view are drawings, but Teevee’s work is also translated into lithographs and stone-cut prints.

“My idea for this show was to not just focus on the artist, who, of course is important and her stories are awesome, but I wanted to show the whole studio at Kinngait and the printmakers who print her drawings,” Coward Wight says.

The curator spent six days in Kinngait at the Kenojuak Cultural Centre and Print Shop, interviewing Teevee as well as all the other creative minds involved because, as the curator says, “it takes many voices to do all these things.”

The resulting documentary video is also on view as part of the exhibition.

Teevee’s works are a significant contribution to Canadian contemporary art, Coward Wight says, but they are also acts of preservation.

“She brings these stories alive and into memory, so that they’re not forgotten.”

Ningiukulu Teevee: Stories From Kinngait will be on view until winter 2026/27.

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