Tayaraq Tunnillie was born in a traditional camp near Kinngait and began carving in the 1960s, drawing inspiration from Inuit stories, spirituality, and the transformative realm between human and animal. At first glance, this sculpture recalls the elegant avian compositions of her husband, Qavaroak (1928-1993) but a closer look reveals that it resists any simple reading as bird and chick. The larger bird figure spreads expansive wings, yet its body is unmistakably human. A muscular chest thrusts forward above legs bent at the knees in a steady, weight-bearing stance, the feet ending in taloned toes. One of its hands reaches upward to the wing’s tip while the other pulls across to grip the beak shut. Beside it stands a smaller, more modest bird, its compact form providing compositional contrast and scale. This contrast heightens the monumental presence of the hybrid man-bird and offers a point of recognition: by reading the smaller figure as clearly birdlike, the unusualness of the larger becomes all the more pronounced. In this ambiguity, the viewer is left to wonder whether the subject is a spirit bird or a shaman in the process of transformation.

MBL