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Biography ... Ruth Qaulluaryuk Nuilaalik was born in 1932 near the Back River in the north-central part of the Northwest Territories (now Nunavut). A member of the mainly inland-dwelling Utkusiksalingmiut, Qaulluaryuk was raised in a traditional milieu centred on caribou hunting, fishing and shamanism. When a series of severe game shortages forced the Utkusiksalingmiut to abandon their independent semi-nomadic lifestyle in the late 1950s, she migrated further south with members of her family, eventually becoming a resident of the new settlement of Baker Lake. She began making drawings in 1970, contributing numerous images to the community’s vibrant new printmaking studio. She is probably best known for her colourful embroidered and appliquéd wallhangings, a form pioneered by several women in Baker Lake in the 1970s. Qaulluaryuk is the daughter of the great Utkusiksalingmiut artist Luke Anguhadluq (1895-1982), and her husband was the well-known sculptor Josiah Nuilaalik (1928-2005). ... In her drawings and prints, Qallauryuk is primarily interested in portraying the animals that live in the Back River region of her youth and early adulthood, including caribou, musk oxen and owls. Formally, these works often feature the use of repetition as a compositional principle. Many images incorporate dense patterns of motifs based on vegetation, countering the popular perception of the Canadian Arctic as a barren region devoid of growth and fecundity. Qallauryuk’s vibrantly coloured textiles employ similar formal characteristics, yet the results are generally more abstract. The majority of these works consist of series of overlapping circles and patterned patches covered in elegant stitchery. Representing the low contoured hills and valleys that characterize the Back River region, these imaginative images are at once beautiful, playful and evocative. |
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