As one of Kinngait’s most creative minds, Anirnik Oshuitoq left an imaginative body of work as her legacy. A review of her drawings in particular shows the ability to recall and create shapes and beings at will, often pulling from a vast bank of memories. Living near Kimmirut (Lake Harbour) during her childhood, Anirnik, like many other Inuk from the time, had contact with white people and their books and religion. [1] While this exposure to the outside world was not unusual, Anirnik’s ability to recall these ideas and thoughts years later and apply even a fragment of them to an image has allowed for a fantastic catalogue of work. A stark profile and large, round eyes are a regular feature of Anirnik’s creatures, regardless of them being animal, human, or otherwise, and the players in The Oracle are no exception. As noted in The Inuit Print catalogue by Helga Goetz, “in this puzzling scene, three persons accompanied by strange spirit creatures kneel suppliantly before priest-like figures high on a cliff. The bird-faced sun adds another odd note.” [2] While concise, this deceptively simple allows for quite the imagination to unfold quite the story upon closer inspection.

1. Jean Blodgett, Grasp Tight the Old Ways: Selections from the Klamer Family Collection of Inuit Art (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1983), fig. 6, p. 72.

2. Helga Goetz, The Inuit Print, international travelling exhibition, (Ottawa: National Museums of Canada and the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, 1977), pl. 42, p. 98.