Image Notes

Qaqaq Ashoona was born in 1928 at a small outpost camp near Cape Dorset. A member of one of Baffin Island’s most prominent artistic families—his mother was the graphic artist Pitseolak Ashoona and his brother is the sculptor Kiuga Ashoona—he grew up in a highly traditional milieu. Following the death of his father in the early 1940s, Ashoona lived with his uncle, Kiakshuk, from whom he learned the skills of a hunter. He started making carvings in 1953 after receiving encouragement from James Houston, the northern administrator who was so instrumental in helping to establish a viable northern carving industry. Throughout his life Ashoona retained a strong attachment to the land and traditional Inuit culture. He continued to make sculptures until shortly before his death in 1996.

As with most Cape Dorset sculpture, Ashoona’s images are in a mainly representation idiom, drawing both on spiritual and non-spiritual themes pertaining to Inuit tradition. Although most of his images include human forms, some attend exclusively to northern wildlife, as in the sculpture featured here. Produced in indigenous white marble, Ashoona’s upright bear is the very image of strength and power. Especially noteworthy is the artist’s use of a lateral perspective that allows the creature’s head, body and feet to be rendered as individual components to be seen, individually, from the angle that provides in each case the largest silhouette. Such expressive stylization gives the sculpture a far stronger presence than would have been the case with a more conventional naturalism.

Gallery Information

MARION SCOTT GALLERY
2423 GRANVILLE STREET
VANCOUVER, BC CANADA V6H 3G5
TEL: 604.685.1934
FAX: 604.685.1890
ART@MARIONSCOTTGALLERY.COM