An homage to the life-sustaining sun envisioned as a maternal presence that animates the natural world, Tattooed Sun is rendered with an elegant and compelling clarity. The face at heart of this arresting graphic commands our attention. A pitch black inked visage with upturned eyes, full cheeks, and a cheerful grin is enlivened with lines of white dots on the cheeks and forehead that represent facial tattoos. A declaration of its identity, these tattoos anthropomorphize the sun as a nurturing matriarch. Encircling this countenance, fiery red rays pulsate outward, their tips accentuated with black. Qiatsuq Niviaqsi's masterful application of inks demands admiration: the colours merge with such vibrancy that they create an optical illusion of movement, as though the red hue radiates with the rhythmic undulation of heat waves.

1. Title inscribed on print / title in catalogue.

References: Image reproduced in Leslie Boyd Ryan, et al., Cape Dorset Prints: A Retrospective, (San Francisco: Pomegranate, 2007), p. 268. For the probable preparatory drawing for this print, see Anna Hudson, ‎Jocelyn Piirainen, ‎& Georgiana Uhlyarik, Tunirrusiangit: Kenojuak Ashevak and Tim Pitsiulak, exh. cat., (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2018), no cat. no., p. 59. This sex-differentiated portrayal of the sun may find its roots in a traditional tale where a woman, after unwittingly committing incest with her brother, flees in shame with a lit torch. In the pursuit that follows, the pair ultimately ascend to the heavens, where they are transformed into the sun and the moon, respectively. See The Woman Who Lives in the Sun of 1960 (see First Arts, May 2019, Lot 15), where the solar and feminine are also presented as one.