Jessie Oonark’s Face with Ulus is a bold explosion of colours and forms. Beautifully mirrored along its vertical axis (and almost along the horizontal one), the image focuses our attention on the lovely central face of a young woman. Ulu shapes anchor the composition at the four corners, and more dance among the coloured bars radiating from her. These bold geometric forms contrast with the woman’s ever so delicate facial features. These include traditional forehead tattoo lines that extend beyond her face like antennae or slender antlers to connect with the nearest ulu blades.

Face with Ulus was created in the same period as Oonark’s masterpiece Big Woman (see First Arts, 12 June 2023, Lot 37). We sense that Oonark’s thoughts and hand were heading in the same direction here, with a similar strong use of colour and a desire to highlight the feminine as artistic inspiration, though with more focused symbolism and greater simplification and repetition of abstract form. The image literally “radiates” both sensitivity and strength and possesses a truly striking emblematic quality that invites comparison with Kenojuak’s The Enchanted Owl (see Lot 11). To our minds it would have been a perfect flag design for the Territory of Nunavut.

References: For a review of the artist’s life and work, see Jean Blodgett and Marie Bouchard, Jessie Oonark: A Retrospective, (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1986). For other writings on Oonark’s depictions of women see Bernadette Driscoll, "Tattoos, Hairsticks and Ulus: The Graphic Art of Jessie Oonark" in Arts Manitoba (Fall 1984), pp. 12-19; Maureen Flynn-Burhoe, “Jessie Oonark: Woman in the Centre”, Inuit Art Quarterly, (Vol. 14, No. 2, Summer 1999), pp. 26-30. See also Robert Enright, “The Art of Jessie Oonark: Ceremonies of Innocence” in Inuit Art Quarterly, (Vol. 2, No. 14, Winter 1987), pp. 3-6.