In Sharon Van Raalte’s appreciation of the man and artist Osuitok in the Royal Academy of Art exhibition catalogue, she writes,

Unlike the stereotype of the Inuit artist looking into the stone to see the form struggling to be released, Osuitok walks the corridors of his own imagination. His images come during dream time, flowing from the trance-like state between two worlds – messengers from another reality. They wait, like seeds promising life, until he finds a piece of stone that will carry their projection [1].

We cannot think of a more apt description of Osuitok’s art as it applies to this remarkable, lyrical image. Much has been made of Osuitok’s idealized yet naturalistic portrayals of animal and human subjects – especially his famous caribou – and rightly so. Sculptures like Walking Caribou (First Arts, 13 July 2021); Rearing Caribou with Nursing Calf (First Arts, 5 December 2022, Lot 43; and Fisherwoman (First Arts, 28 May 2019, Lot 28) are staggeringly beautiful and technical marvels. With Caribou Composition we get to appreciate Osuitok’s imagination in a whole new light. Carved at the end of a decade of spectacular artistic flowering in Cape Dorset, the sculpture seems to harken back to the early 1960s when sculptors and graphic artists alike (but perhaps most notably Kenojuak) were creating marvelous flowing, dreamy images of spirits and animals.

Caribou Composition does indeed seem to flow from a “trance-like” state of mind. Osuitok’s charming menagerie – caribou, hare, owl and other birds, bear, seal – does not look or feel like a group-portrait; instead, the image comes across as dream-like, even visionary. Here Osuitok aims not for precision and mastery of the stone, but rather for poetry and magic. This sculpture is truly, quite literally enchanting.

1. Sharon Van Raalte, “Osuitok Ipeelee,” p. 42