Davidialuk is remembered for his wonderful illustrations of traditional narratives and episodes from his own life. Through both sculpture and graphic work, he conveyed stories of traditional life and narratives, preserving cultural memory while also demonstrating his imagination and skill. One such theme that the artist revisited often was the Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis.

In the Eastern Arctic, the Northern Lights are called aqsarniit, meaning “football players,” a name that reflects the belief that the phenomenon is caused by spirits of the dead playing a game using a skull as a ball. The auroral display inspired both wonder and dread, filling the sky with movement that was at once beautiful and overwhelming. Accounts from across the region describe a profound reverence for the phenomenon. The aqsarniit were said to be dangerous if drawn too close by human sound. Whistling was thought to invite them down, risking decapitation in their swift descent.

With its brilliant composition of flowing form and restless motion, this work by Davidialuk gives artistic shape to the aqsarniit, capturing their sweep, their peril, and their ceaseless dance across the sky. Their danger is made tangible: a man lies freshly decapitated by the lights, his body wrapped in their curling arcs until it is difficult to see where limb ends and light begins. The surface carries the artist’s dense incised linework, each cut anchoring further detail into the scene. These “drawn” lines ripple along the outer wall to echo the aurora’s eerie sound and shape, while within the open collar of the jacket the severed brain stem is rendered with unsettling precision. Even the face of the victim bears its own grim mark: the moustached mouth is crossed with an “x” to signal that he has indeed been whistling, his head lobbed off mid-note.

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References: For more information on the Borealis in North, see John MacDonald, The Arctic Sky : Inuit Astronomy, Star Lore, And Legend, (Toronto/Iqaluit: Royal Ontario Museum / Nunavut Research Centre, 1998), p. 149-51. Davidialuk’s The Aurora Borealis Decapitating a Young Man, c. 1965, which is housed in the National Gallery of Canada (access. no. 36171) is reproduced in Ingo Hessel, Inuit Art: An Introduction, (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre / New York: Harry Abrams / London: British Museum Press, 1998), pl. 61, p. 83; Candace Sherk Savage, Aurora: The Mysterious Northern Lights, (Buffalo, NY: Firefly Books, 2001), p. 41.