Katherine Takpannie: Every Now and Then I Get a Feeling

Every Now and Then I Get a Feeling is the first major survey exhibition of Katherine Takpannie’s photography, bringing together key works spanning two decades of her practice, including her most recent series, Urban Inuk, produced entirely in Ottawa with members of the local Inuit community. 

Katherine Takpannie has emerged as a defining voice of her generation, working both behind and in front of the camera to assert authorship over representations of contemporary Inuit life. Moving between documentation and self-performance, her practice juxtaposes images of urban Inuit experience in the South with striking self-portraits and landscape photography made in the North. In these works, her body becomes a site of encounter—situated within, rather than set against, the land—foregrounding questions of belonging, embodiment and self-determination within the inherited and lived territories of her family and ancestors.

Drawing on Inuit knowledge systems, Takpannie references creation stories that predate colonization, in which living beings are believed to emerge from the niaquqtaak (hummocks) of the earth. These stories position women as inseparable from the land and as givers of life, from which emerges a responsibility to protect both women and the environment. In dialogue with this worldview, and in light of research demonstrating how the climate crisis exacerbates gender-based violence, Takpannie’s work calls for collective stewardship of the land—insisting that women be treated with the same care, respect and responsibility.

Throughout her artistic career, Takpannie has often interwoven her practice with activist projects that reflect these concerns, bringing attention to some of the most urgent social issues affecting Indigenous communities in Canada, including missing and murdered Indigenous women and the ongoing youth suicide crisis. Among these, the series Our Women and Girls Are Sacred (2016–2020) stands out: in several photographs, Takpannie ignites flares of red smoke in natural settings, creating private, ephemeral monuments to missing and murdered women, including her friend and major artistic influence, the late Inuk artist Annie Pootoogook. In another work, a photograph of Takpannie’s brother, set against a gritty urban landscape, captures a moment that is at once hopeful and forward-looking. In light of his death by suicide in 2020, the title of the 2017 work, Return if Possible, takes on especially poignant resonance. 

In the SAW project room, the exhibition includes the feature documentary Inuuvunga – I Am Inuk, I Am Alive, featuring documentary footage created by Nunavik teenagers, who come of age within a rapidly changing cultural landscape. The film, produced by the National Film Board of Canada in 2004, echoes many of the themes explored throughout Katherine Takpannie’s survey exhibition. In the SAW North Lobby, SAW Nordic Lab presents eight self-portraits by artists participating in the NEXT Emerging Indigenous Makers Program, created under the mentorship of Nordic Lab Screenprinting Studio Director Michael Peterson and Paris-based photo muralist Hugues Anhès, who completed an artist residency at SAW in fall 2025 as part of the SAW Art + Protest Initiative.

As Ottawa continues to establish itself as a major centre for Indigenous art and culture, Katherine Takpannie has emerged among a celebrated group of contemporary Indigenous photographers, including Meryl McMaster, Barry Pottle, Jeff Thomas and Rosalie Favell. Every Now and Then I Get a Feeling offers a timely opportunity to encounter Takpannie’s distinctive body of work. Through her photography, she seeks to shift perspectives, foster empathy and influence societal change, moving visitors from passive viewing toward active engagement.

Jason St-Laurent, Curator

—

Artist biography

Katherine Takpannie is an urban Inuk photographer born in Montreal, with family roots in Nunavut and enduring ties to its land and community. She is an alumna of the Nunavut Sivuniksavut program in Ottawa, where she studied the Nunavut Agreement and its implementation, political science, research methodologies, Inuit–government relations, contemporary issues, Inuit history and the Inuktitut language.

Through her photographic practice, Takpannie foregrounds Inuit worldviews, asserting an image-making approach grounded in social accountability, relationality and community. Photography functions for her as both a critical and personal tool—one through which she reclaims identity and reflects on lived experience as an urban Inuk navigating multiple geographies.

Takpannie’s work has been exhibited nationally and published widely. Recent exhibitions include presentations at the National Gallery of Canada; the Biennale d’art contemporain autochtone (BACA); the Art Gallery of Guelph; Peel Art Gallery, Museum and Archives (PAMA); and the Olga Korper Gallery in Toronto. Her work is held in public and municipal collections, including the City of Ottawa Art Collection. Her photographs have appeared in Inuit Art Quarterly, Canadian Geographic and Canadian Wildlife. In 2020, she was awarded the Scotiabank New Generation Photography Award by the National Gallery of Canada, which also holds her work in its permanent collection.

About the Nordic Lab

The Nordic Lab is an initiative of SAW in partnership with the Canada Council for the Arts. A research and production space for artists from circumpolar nations, the Nordic Lab is an integral part of SAW's 15,000-square-foot centre in downtown Ottawa. In addition to programs in Ottawa, the Nordic Lab forges collaborations and promotes exchanges between Canada’s Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in the North and South and partners in Scandinavia and other circumpolar nations.

—

Funders: Ottawa Community Foundation, Canada Council for the Arts, Government of Canada, Ontario Arts Council, Government of Ontario, City of Ottawa

Partners: SPAO: Photographic Arts Centre, Embassy of France in Canada, Olga Korper Gallery, National Film Board of Canada