Karoo Ashevak came to carving soon after moving into Taloyoak (Spence Bay) in 1968, when whale bone had been specially flown into the settlement and a number of local artists began experimenting with it. What began as a community opportunity became, in his hands, something extraordinary. Karoo’s ascent was rapid: by 1973, only a few years into his artistic practice, he had already had three solo exhibitions, including one in New York. His life ended far too early in 1974, when he and his wife tragically died in a house fire. Even so, five years proved enough for Karoo to alter the course of Inuit art in a lasting way.

What set Karoo’s work apart then, and still does now, is the sheer audacity of his invention. At outset, unlike many of his peers, he did not treat materials as fixed but as elements to be combined, tested, and, most importantly, to be made deliberately strange. In his sculpture, bone, antler, ivory, stone, and other materials come together with complete freedom, while the figures themselves are pegged, joined, and built in ways that feel fresh, improvised, and entirely his own.

The present work likely dates from just before the midpoint of Karoo’s brief career, on the threshold of the more radical phase in which he began to unsettle the body itself, deliberately mismatching features such as the eyes.

Suspended on a peg rather than planted on its feet, the figure here refuses any stable, grounded stance. Its legs hang loose, giving the impression not of standing but of hovering or dancing, a reading that recalls the trance state or spirit flight associated with the shaman’s passage beyond ordinary physical limits. That impression grows stronger in light of Jean Blodgett’s discussion of shamanic performance, in which dancing and ecstatic movement animate the body [1]. The open mouth also feels active rather than merely descriptive, suggesting chant, breath, or spoken incantation, and reinforcing Blodgett’s emphasis on ritual action as something heard as well as seen [2]. Most telling of all are the mittens. As Blodgett notes, “another of the shaman’s accoutrements were his mittens,” worn in ritual practice, including as protection against evil spirits [3].

1. Jean Blodgett, Karoo Ashevak, (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1977), unpaginated.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

FA