It is apt that Josiah Nuilaalik’s sculptures were exhibited alongside Irene Avaalaaqiaq’s works on cloth in the exhibition that included this masterful work; one can imagine this caribou-shaman or spirit figure inhabiting one of her fine hangings. That exhibition featured two other masterpieces by Nuilaalik: Shaman (see First Arts, 14 June 2022, Lot 134) and Female Shaman (First Arts, 5 December 2022, Lot 69).

Caribou/Man gazes heavenward with an air of ecstasy or expectation, in a manner like the winged Shaman referenced above. But while his face wears the contemplative look of many Nuilaalik figures, the caribou body of this hybrid creature seems to strut along with some confidence and even nonchalance. Sculpturally, the figure possesses the wonderful sense of malleability that makes Nuilaalik’s shape-shifting transformation figures so uniquely believable.

The eldest son of Jessie Oonark, Nuilaalik was adopted out to his paternal grandmother but as they all lived together, he grew up with the rest of the family. He married the future textile and graphic artist Ruth Qaulluaryuk (daughter of Luke Anguhadluq) in 1948; they moved into Baker Lake in the late 1950s. Nuilaalik carved only occasionally until the late 1980s but is now considered to be one of Baker Lake’s major sculptural talents.

References: For a contemporaneous and stylistically similar Caribou/Bear Shaman see First Arts, 28 May 2019, Lot 66. For other important works by Nuilaalik see Ingo Hessel, Arctic Spirit: Inuit Art from the Albrecht Collection at the Heard Museum, (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre / Phoenix: Heard Museum, 2006), cats. 30 (p. 30) and 66 (p. 77); the latter work is also illustrated in Walker’s Auctions, 18 November 2015, Lot 18.