Jackoposie Oopakak spent his early years living on the land at Cumberland Sound near the community of Pangnirtung. He learned to carve from his adoptive father Oopakak before moving to Iqaluit to study jewellery making in the 1970s. While in Iqaluit, Jackoposie befriended Thomas and Helen Webster, proprietors of Iqaluit Fine Arts Studio. The Websters encouraged Jackoposie, providing him with studio space and marketing his works locally as well as to Inuit galleries in the South. According to the Websters, Jackoposie produced perhaps ten full rack antler compositions in his lifetime, the most famous being frequently displayed at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. He remains unrivalled in this genre of antler art.

The minute attention to detail in this sculpture speaks to Jackopsie’s training as a jeweller as well as his distinguished career as a sculptor. Mounted on a sensitively carved life-size stone caribou head, there is not one inch of this magnificent antler rack which has not been decorated to create a sprawling narrative of traditional Inuit camp life and the harmony between the terrestrial and spirit worlds. Animals from air, land, and sea all share the surface with a multitude of faces (perhaps representing either extended family or ancestors), Inuit drummers, shaman figures, transformation figures, Sedna the goddess of the sea, and even the night sky. One can only imagine the time and effort that went into this magnificent and flawless composition. The Inuit World is equal parts engineering marvel and artistic tour de force.

References: See the similarly impressive example in the National Gallery of Canada Collection that was published in Inuit Art Quarterly, Summer 2004, Vol. 19, No. 2, p. 4. For another spectacular example by the artist see Walker’s Auctions, Ottawa, 18 May 2017, Lot 93.