Winter Count | Compte d'hiver (English/French)
Embracing the Cold | Au cœur du froid
Winter Count draws inspiration from the Plains First Nations practices of recording significant events each winter, a visual reminder that helps structure histories and traditions passed down to future generations. This handsome volume explores how winter has long shaped Indigenous, Canadian settler, and northern European art, uniting different cultural perspectives through such diverse topics as storytelling, effects of light, physical adaptation, and community and isolation.
Presenting a selection of works spanning from the early 19th century to the present day — including artists such as Kenojuak Ashevak, J.E.H. MacDonald, Claude Monet, Kent Monkman, Megan Musseau, and Jin-me Yoon — Winter Count features approximately 170 plates, along with illustrated essays by curators from the National Gallery of Canada. The result is a book that invites readers to see winter anew — not as a season to be endured, but as a source of invention, connection, and mutual respect across time and place.
Available format(s)
Katerina Atanassova is Senior Curator, Canadian Art, at the National Gallery of Canada.
Wahsontiio Cross is Associate Curator, Indigenous Ways and Decolonization, at the National Gallery of Canada.
Anabelle Kienle Ponka is Senior Curator, European, American, and Asian Art, at the National Gallery of Canada.
Jocelyn Piirainen is an urban Inuk, originally from Ikaluktutiak (Cambridge Bay), Nunavut. She is Associate Curator, Inuit Art in the Indigenous Ways and Decolonization department at the National Gallery of Canada. Piirainen’s recent curatorial work included Winter Count: Embracing the Cold at the National Gallery of Canada. The former Associate Curator of Inuit Art at the Winnipeg Art Gallery and Qaumajuq worked on numerous exhibitions including ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ/Ruovttu Guvlui/Towards Home with the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal and co-curated the landmark exhibition Tunirrusiangit: Kenojuak Ashevak and Tim Pitsiulak, presented at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Inuk du monde urbain, Jocelyn Piirainen, née à Ikaluktutiak (Cambridge Bay), au Nunavut, est conservatrice associée d’art inuit à la section Voies autochtones et décolonisation du Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, où elle a récemment été commissaire de l’exposition Compte d’hiver : au cœur du froid. Elle a été auparavant conservatrice associée d’art inuit au Musée des beaux-arts de Winnipeg-Qaumajuq, où elle a participé à l’organisation de nombreuses expositions, dont ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ/Ruovttu Guvlui/Towards Home/Vers chez soi, présentée en collaboration avec le Centre canadien d’architecture, de Montréal, en plus d’être co-commissaire de Tunirrusiangit: Kenojuak Ashevak and Tim Pitsiulak, une exposition marquante de l’Art Gallery of Ontario.
