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Artworks
JOSIAH NUILAALIK (1928-2005) Qamani’tuaq (BAKER LAKE)
Bird-Caribou-Shaman Transformation, 2000-01stone and antler, 15.25 x 13 x 4 in (38.7 x 33 x 10.2 cm)
signed, "ᓄᐃᓚᓕ".
LOT 111
ESTIMATE: $6,000 — $9,000Further images
Nuilaalik’s sculptural style is somewhat outside the Baker Lake mainstream aesthetic, which tends to accentuate massiveness, with bulky volumes and rounded curves. His phantasmagorical figures of transforming animal spirits and...Nuilaalik’s sculptural style is somewhat outside the Baker Lake mainstream aesthetic, which tends to accentuate massiveness, with bulky volumes and rounded curves. His phantasmagorical figures of transforming animal spirits and animal-shamans seem more likely to have stepped out of Baker Lake drawings, prints and wall hangings, taking on three-dimensional but shape-shifting form in stone and antler. The sculptures are quite literally dream-like images, spun from the artist’s imagination.The moods of Nuilaalik’s hybrid creations vary from agitated or ecstatic, to trance-like or serene. Bird-Caribou-Shaman Transformation beautifully embodies the latter mood. The shaman’s human face seems to look directly at the viewer, and yet we feel that his mind and spirit are elsewhere; he truly is “possessed” by the animal spirits whose bodies he temporarily inhabits. Nuilaalik, who claimed to have no direct knowledge of shamanism and spirits, certainly had the uncanny ability to capture the “in-between” spaces where the worlds of animals and humans intersect and overlap in traditional Inuit beliefs.
Literature: For other fine transformation pieces by Nuilaalik see Marion Scott Gallery, Two Great Image Makers from Baker Lake (Vancouver, 1999), figs. 13, 17, 30, 32. See also First Arts, July 2020, Lot 95. See also Walker’s Auctions, Ottawa, Nov. 2012, Lot 81; Nov. 2013, Lot 114; May 2014, Lot 42; Nov. 2014, Lot 15; Nov. 2015, Lot 18; Ingo Hessel, Arctic Spirit: Inuit Art from the Albrecht Collection at the Heard Museum (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre / Phoenix: Heard Museum, 2006), cats. 30, 66.
Provenance
Marion Scott Gallery, Vancouver;
Acquired from the above by Fred and Mary Widding, Ithaca, NY, July 2001.Exhibitions
Ithaca, NY, Handwerker Gallery, Gannett Center, Ithaca College, Of the People; Inuit Sculpture from the Collection of Mary and Fred Widding, 26 February - 6 April 2008, cat. no. 34Publications
Cheryl Kramer & Lillian R. Shafer eds., Of the People; Inuit Sculpture from the Collection of Mary and Fred Widding, exh. cat., (Ithaca, NY: Handwerker Gallery, Gannett Center, Ithaca College, 2008), reproduced, cat. no. 34.
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