In this remarkable work, our initial focus is on the woman’s tresses, which engage in lively dance with an invisible headwind. This is a testament to the quality of the stone but especially to Henry's intrepidity as a carver. The undulating flow of the hair lends an illusion of weightlessness to the sculpture, as if defying the stone's inherent nature. Henry leaves the ends of the young woman’s hair mostly unworked but highly polished, imparting a sense of palpable, almost unbridled energy. Furthermore, the artist’s precise modeling of her smooth skin invites light to dance upon her features. A gentle, upturned smile adorns her rounded face, starting at her lips and radiating into her cheeks. Differential chiseling of the irises and pupils produces a dynamic interplay of light and shadow, enlivening her wide eyes.

Two photographs of the artist creating a strikingly similar work are published in Flora Evans’s article "The stone speaks to the artist and then he carves" in the Montreal Gazette, Wednesday 26 February 1975, p. 37. Both works appear distinctive enough to be portraits, but Evaluardjuk’s comments in the Gazette article suggest that they are fond recollections of the women of his home community of Igloolik, poetic memories of a place “where the wind blows and blows” and “the women like to walk with the wind in their hair,” immortalized in stone. Stylistically, the work may be partially inspired by European sculpture. Evaluardjuk loved to look at art books in the library of the high school where he taught carving a few weeks a year. Simply stunning.

References: For a self portrait of the artist, see First Arts, Lot 60, 12 June 2023, For a portrait head of a bearded religious figure from 1963 see George Swinton, Sculpture of the Inuit, (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1972/92), fig. 530, p. 197; and Maria von Finckenstein ed., Celebrating Inuit Art 1948-1970, (Hull, QC: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1999), p. 135. See also exhibition catalogue for The Sculpture of Henry Evaluardjuk, Montreal, Eskimo Art Gallery, 5-23 May 1987. See the article “Henry Evaluardjuk” by his grandson Jamesie Taligvat Evaluardjuk Fournier in Inuit Art Quarterly (Spring 2023, Vol. 36.1), pp. 70-71. See Head from 1976 in Marie Routledge, Inuit Art in the 1970s (Kingston, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 1979), cat. 31, p. 53.