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Luke Anowtalik was born in 1932 in the area around
Ennadai Lake, where he was raised according to the traditional
beliefs and customs of the Ihalmiut, an inland group
of Caribou Inuit. During the 1950s a combination of
poor caribou hunting and misguided government relocation
schemes resulted in frequent disaster for the group,
including starvation. In response to these catastrophes,
the entire group was moved into permanent settlements
in the late 1950s, first to Whale Cove and subsequently
to Arviat on the Western shores of Hudson Bay. Along
with Andy Miki, Elizabeth Nutaraluk and others of his
group, Anowtalik started carving regularly for income
while in Whale Cove, carrying on this activity once
in Arviat. One of the Keewatin's great founders of contemporary
art, he continued to live and carve in Arviat together
with his wife Mary Ayaq Anowtalik, also a noted sculptor,
until his passing in 2006.
Anowtalik's sculptures typically combine elements of relief-style
carving with fully three-dimensional sculptural volumes. Portraying
groups of human forms and faces emerging sensuously from masses of
unpolished grey stone, these semi-representational works are at once
powerful and quietly expressive. In his best works, images of humans
intermingle with heads of caribou crowned with antlers, symbolizing
the close relationship—spiritual and material—that has
always existed between the Ihalmiut and the caribou upon which the
people depended for food and clothing.
Anowtalik is also well-known for his playful, toy-like carvings,
created from caribou antler, in which groups of human figures are
suspended from antler branches or hang whimsically from swing-like
structures.
Selected References
Sculpture of the Inuit (1999), George Swinton
Vision
and Form (2003), Robert Kardosh
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