Shuvinai is a third generation Inuit artist, born in Kinngait in August, 1961. She is the daughter of Kiawak Ashoona and Sorosilutu, both well known for their contributions to the arts in Cape Dorset. Shuvinai began drawing in 1996. She works with pen and ink, coloured pencils and oil sticks and her sensibility for the landscape around the community of Cape Dorset is particularly impressive. Shuvinai’s work was first included in the Cape Dorset Annual Print Collection in 1997, and since then, she has become a committed and prolific graphic artist, working daily in the Kinngait Studios.

Shuvinai’s work has attracted the attention of several notable private galleries as well as public institutions. She was featured along with her aunt, Napachie Pootoogook, and her grandmother, the late Pitseolak Ashoona, in the McMichael Canadian Collection’s 1999 exhibition entitled “Three Women, Three Generations.” Shuvinai’s 2008 collaboration with Saskatchewan-based artist, John Noestheden, on a "sky-mural” was exhibited at 2008 Art Basel (Basel), Toronto’s 2008 "Nuit Blanche", and in 2013 as part of ‘Sakahans’ an exhibition of international Indigenous art at the National Gallery of Canada. Shuvinai is also the subject of a documentary art film, Ghost Noise, produced and directed by Marcia Connolly.