Despite his stature as one of the great early artists of Kinngait, remarkably little is known of Niviaqsi's life. His death while hunting polar bears in 1959 remains particularly elusive, and the surviving record of his work is similarly incomplete. His known oeuvre attests to a formidable talent in both sculpture and graphic art, yet he appears to have produced relatively little, while the sparse documentation surrounding his work has allowed misattributions to persist over the years.

Niviaqsi is believed to have begun carving in 1951 at the encouragement of James Houston. By the middle of the decade, he was already regarded as one of the strongest artists among an exceptionally gifted group working in the community. We believe this lovely Standing Woman dates to several years earlier, around 1953, and reveals a somewhat more exploratory Niviaqsi, still testing the possibilities of the human figure in stone.

The figure is elongated and slender, her body drawn upward into a tall, gently tapering silhouette. There is an appealing tension between this length and the deliberately abbreviated hands and feet, which are rendered almost playfully small beneath the generous sweep of the body. Her arms fold neatly across her front, while the heavy parka frames the head and shoulders in a series of broad, rounded forms. The result is a figure of considerable presence, whose unusual proportions give her an appealing mixture of dignity and charm.

FA