Last night, on my birthday, I checked out the second of two art openings in Ottawa.
This exhibition took place at SAW Gallery and features urban Inuk photographer Katherine Takpannie’s exhibition Every Now and Then I Get a Feeling.
I was especially impressed by the presentation of Katherine’s photographs on fabric, a striking choice that adds texture and depth to the images and makes the work stand out in a unique way.
The exhibition runs until April 4, 2026, with a closing reception scheduled from 2–6 PM.
About the exhibition:
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.
Check out the gallery.
