The structure of this print is characteristic of a number of Kenojuak's early compositions, in which solid black figures sit against a broad field of colour. Here, however, the arrangement has a particular charm. Against the hot red ground, two essential registers unfold. Above, the birds remain fully avian. Two sharp, hook-beaked gulls flank a central snowy owl, their forms almost mirroring one another across the upper field [1].

Below, Kenojuak lets the boundary between bird and human become wonderfully porous and fanciful. While anthropomorphism, the attribution of human qualities and behaviour to animals, would become a familiar feature in Inuit art, it is easy to forget how early and experimental such imagery was in the present work. Kenojuak was among the first generation of artists to make such fanciful hybrids a sustained part of the emerging language of Inuit printmaking [2].

In the lower section, the titular bird-humans seem to have gathered together for company and this scene has all the delicious logic of a daydream. The creatures remain unmistakably birds, yet they have entered a recognizably human world of company, conversation, and hospitality. Their long, sharp beaks open in greeting, each face turned towards another, and one can almost hear the little chorus of chirps passing amongst them. There is tea to be shared among these avian friends. Between the quartet of bird-humans, a quilliq (lamp) burns brightly, flanked by two small teacups, while the figure at centre left arrives bearing a teapot.

Drawn by Kenojuak and printed by Eegyvudluk Pootoogook, the work is lavished with detail. The plumage is built from meticulous rows of repeated V-shaped incisions, suggesting the layered softness of feathers while giving each bird its own distinctive pattern.

The clothing receives the same attention. The amautiik and atigiik (female and male coats) are carefully articulated through negative spaces that describe hoods, waists, and trim, while the exposed portion of the small figure's Mother Hubbard dress at far left is covered in jaunty polka dots. On the bird-mother at right, tightly packed diagonals slice across her garment, creating a lovely field of geometric patterning.

The leggings and trousers carry their own vocabulary of ornament. Broad horizontal bands stack one above another, separated by narrow borders. Elsewhere, rows of small triangles form sawtooth and chevron edges, while neat lines of dots sit above them like tiny textile borders. The garments themselves culminate in delightful hybrid forms that combine the shape of a kamik (boot) with the hooked silhouette of a bird talon.

No element is left unconsidered, even the laces and a small hole for the screw in the snow knife has been recorded. All these details do more than ornament the scene. They give the gathering its particular character, filling it with the pleasures of dress, decoration, and domestic life.

There is a wonderful humour in the whole affair but also something more revealing about Kenojuak's imaginative freedom. In the years that followed the production of Bird Humans, she would establish herself as one of the defining figures of Inuit art, continually expanding the possibilities of the bird, in particular, as well as the hybrid and the fantastical. Something of that freedom is already fully present here.

Additionally, when looking at this work, we recall the now famous quotation by Kenojuak, repeated in nearly every publication on the artist:

I am an owl and I am a happy owl. I like to make people happy and everything happy. I am the light of happiness and I am a dancing

owl [3].

The statement seems to provide a key to the present image. Kenojuak does not describe the owl from a distance. "I am an owl," she says, collapsing the boundary between woman and bird in much the same way that these figures do. Their human clothing, gestures, and social rituals mingle freely with their beaks, plumage, and avian forms.

One might even imagine Kenojuak herself among them, baby Adamie or Arnaqu nestled in her amaut, meeting a friend for an afternoon visit and tea.

1. I note that this bird form is almost a character in its own right in Kenojuak’s work of this period and appears closely related to the bird in the following lot!

2. I gratefully acknowledge Mark London for drawing attention to Tudlik’s Bird Dream Forewarning Blizzards, 1959, #16, though I would distinguish Tudlik’s figure as more explicitly spirit-like than the fanciful bird-human hybrids found in Kenojuak’s work.

3. I have been attempting to trace the original source of this oft-repeated quotation without success. Any assistance in identifying its earliest publication would be most welcome.

ND