Annie Mikpiga Biography

Annie Mikpiga

Inuit/Canadian

1900-1984

Biography

 

Annie Mikpiga, stone carver, printmaker, and batik artist, was an Inuit artist who lived in one of the Nunavik villages within the province of Quebec near Hudson Bay. She was born in 1900 in Akua near the settlement Puvirnituq and lived a nomadic life until the Inuit were forced to settle in permanent communities. Milpiga began working in stone carving and has been recognized as one of the first Inuit artists to experiment with printmaking.

Mikpiga made her first prints when she was sixty-years old. Her first series of prints were exhibited in the Arctic community of Cape Dorset and her prints were included in the annual exhibitions Povungnituk Print Collection from 1962 to 1973 [missing only 1963, 1967 and 1971].

Mikpiga was also included in the following exhibitions: The Inuit Print / L’estampe inuit, Department of Indian Affairs and National Museum of Man, 1977; Canadian Eskimo Art, Fine Art Gallery, Montana State University, Bozeman, 1979; Winnipeg Collects: Inuit Art from Private Collections, Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1987; Les Image Inuit du Nouveau-Québec, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, 1988; Kunst aus der Arktis, Völkerkundmuseum der Universität Zürich, 1994; Arctic Spirit 35 Years of Canadian Inuit Art, Frye Art Museum, Seattle, 1994; Inuit Art from the Glenblow Collection, Glenbow Museum, Calgary; and Works on Paper from the Permanent Collection of Inuit Art, Canadian Guild of Craft, Quebec.

The work of Annie Mikpiga is represented in the collections of the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff; the Glenbow Museum, Calgary; the Canadian Museum of Civilization, Hull; the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, Kingston; the Avataq Cultural Institute, Montreal; the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal; the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Canadian Guild of Crafts and the Musée de las civilisation, Quebec; and the Winnipeg Art Gallery.  

Annie Mikpiga died in 1984.