Based on the incredibly detailed graphite drawing by Hannah Kigusiuq, Inuttuit presents simple but deft portraits of the people who populated the artist’s community of Baker Lake. Kigusiuq was asked to draw eighty faces by arts advisor Jack Butler but got carried away and drew over five hundred [1]! While their essential forms are repeated many times, through a process of subtle alterations Kigusiuq creates slight variations and unexpected contrasts from person to person. In Inuttuit the figures vary slightly in posture and the expressive faces are to an extent individualized. Kudos must also be given to the printmaker, Thomas Sivuraq (see lot 32), whose skilled and patient hand recreated the face and anatomical particulars of the hundreds of faces in Kigusiuq’s drawing.

1. The original drawing is illustrated alongside the print in Bernadette Driscoll, Baker Lake Prints & Print-Drawings 1970-76, 1983, p. 57.

References: This print has been reproduced in Helga Goetz, The Inuit Print, international travelling exhibition, (Ottawa: National Museums of Canada and the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, 1977), pl. 133, p. 223 and Jean Blodgett, Looking South: The Winnipeg Art Gallery, (Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1978), cat. 60; For a version of this print illustrated alongside the artist’s original drawing see WAG, Bernadette Driscoll, Baker Lake Prints & Print-Drawings 1970-76, (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1983), p. 57. A detail of the work has also been used for several cover images and frontispieces, including Jeanne Guillemin, ed., Anthropological Realities: Readings in the Science of Culture, (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Inc., 1981); Annual Report, 1982, (Ottawa: Indian and Northern Affairs, 1982); and John Bennett, Uqalurait: An Oral History of Nunavut, (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2004).