In this fascinating print, we witness the magical interplay of creatures that seem to dance between the realms of physical and spiritual, echoing the traditional belief in the mutability of human and animal forms, particularly for shamans. The outline of the caribou appears to glide effortlessly across the sheet. Merged within the caribou’s form is a man with seal-like flippers projecting from the back of his head. These appendages are grasped by hands and arms that also transform into hind flippers. The form of this spectral composition is inked in black atop a blue expanse that could be either the vastness of the sky or the depths of the sea. This ambiguous background, possibly crafted through the impression of caribou skin or the press of a piece of whalebone [1], the porosity of either creating a textured surface that seems to twinkle as the white of the sheet peeks through.

In this print, as with others from 1960 and 1961, a subtle detail catches the observant viewer: a small 'eye' shape atop the artist’s syllabic signature distinguishes this print as the creation of the female Eegyvudluk Ragee, rather than the make Eegyvudluk Pootoogook.

1. In his Eskimo Prints, (1967), James Houston says that the “background itself is a rubbing taken from Caribou skin” (p. 104). Helga Goetz, however, citing Terry Ryan in The Inuit Print (1977) suggests that the background was “inked with a slab of whalebone” (p. 56).

References: This image is reproduced in James A. Houston, Eskimo Prints, (Barre, MA, USA: Barre Publishers, 1967), p. 105 and in Helga Goetz, The Inuit Print, international travelling exhibition, (Ottawa: National Museums of Canada and the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, 1977), pl. 8, p. 56.

See Jean Blodgett, In Cape Dorset We Do It This Way: Three Decades of Inuit Printmaking, (Kleinberg, ON: McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 1991), for a discussion of the artists's early graphite works of this period. For other early works by the artist that contain transformative elements, see Wolf Possessed by Spirits, 1960 #5, this catalogue, Lot 27; Two-Faces Sea Spirit, 1961 #7; and Totem, 1961 #63.