UNIVERSAL COBRA

In the 2009 exhibition Noise Ghost, held at the University of Toronto’s Justina M Barnicke gallery, curator Nancy Campbell paired the drawings of Shuvinai Ashoona and Shary Boyle. It was the first time the artists had encountered each other’s work. In 2011 Boyle traveled to Cape Dorset in Nunavut to meet Ashoona and draw for three weeks alongside the artists of Kinngait studios. During that trip Ashoona and Boyle made their first drawing on the same page: Ashoona titled it Universal Cobra Pussy. Over the next few years, during her rare trips south, Ashoona would visit Boyle in Toronto. Boyle mailed up posters and books of her work, and sent postcards.

In late summer of 2015, Shary Boyle made four drawings in Montreal and left sections of each blank. Simultaneously, Shuvinai Ashoona made three in Cape Dorset, leaving regions of white space. Boyle flew to Baffin Island in late September 2015, and for five days they worked again at the Kinngait studios. Swapping drawings, Ashoona and Boyle completed each other’s images, occasionally going back onto the same page while the other was working.

In November 2015 the artists came together in Montreal to present Universal Cobra, an exhibition of drawings, sculptures and collaborative drawings co-presented by Feheley Fine Arts & Pierre-Francois Ouellette art contemporain.