To the Bone: Spirits, Skulls and Stories
The IAQ is excited to share a unique grouping of drawings, prints, photographs and sculptures that share a common subject of bones. Leading and emerging artists working across the Arctic share images that show bone as not only a leading material for Inuit artists but also an important inspiration.
The Arctic is rich with bones. Found on the tundra, washed up on the shore or harvested from the hunt, Inuit have used bones for tools and in stories and legends since time immemorial. Bone, specifically whalebone and caribou antler, has also been one of the most popular materials employed by Inuit artists in their work. In addition to their use as media, bones have become the subject of many celebrated artists. In the early 1970s, William Noah began making drawings and prints showing “X-ray” shamans and caribou. These incredibly bold graphic works depict shamans who, as apprentices, learned to divest themselves of flesh so that nothing remained but their bones. Also depicted in this Portfolio are skeletal figures by Lucy Meeko (1929– 2004), Abraham Anghik Ruben, OC, Ningiukulu Teevee and Samonie Toonoo (1969–2017).
Others have chosen to depict bones in still lives. Western art history has a long tradition of paintings and sculptures of skulls and bones called memento mori—memories of death. Though the works shown here may or may not be memento mori, they are each incredibly venerative, showing a deep respect and connection to ancestors, as well as animals hunted for food. Works by Shuvinai Ashoona, RCA, Mark Emerak (1901–1983), Jimmy Manning, Joseph Illupalik Palluq and Couzyn van Heuvelen illustrate animal bones on the land, a grieving figure and a geometric rendering of a bird skull.
The works in the following pages offer a poignant reminder of the fleetingness of mortality as well as the long future ahead for those physical pieces that remain. Whalebone in particular must be left to age for upwards of a hundred years before it is dry enough for carving. As a result, bone, as both material and subject, conjures an awareness of time that is understandably slower.
A man travelling on foot with some companions ate some berries that contained the effect of a bad spirit. He was warned not to eat any of these unusual berries, but he was so hungry that he had to take some while the others went ahead of him. He ate berries and immediately lost his flesh. . . . And his clothing didn’t fit any more since he was only bones. They are just lying around him. And the food he is eating just falls through his jaws.1
— Lucy Meeko
This drawing is based on a Greenlandic story. A mother of a murdered son became a polar bear to avenge her son. The bear was killed to save the camp. When it was cut up, inside was a human skeleton of the mother.2
— Ningiukulu Teevee
The work is called Lost and Confused. It is about holding on to the dead and listening for life. After losing too many loved ones to unfortunate passings, I became isolated and lonely. The skull represents the people I was grieving, the caribou legs represent the spirit within and the hand over the ear represents looking for life.3
— Joseph Illupalik Palluq
NOTES
¹ Marybelle Myers, Arctic Quebec 1974: Prints (Montreal: La Fédération des coopératives du Nouveau-Quebec, 1974), 19.
² “The Avenging Spirit by Inuit Artist Ningiukulu Teevee,” Inuit Gallery of Vancouver, accessed January 2017. https://inuit.com/products/dr141037.
³ Facebook communication with Joseph Illupalik Palluq on January 9, 2018.