Tabea Murphy
Nain
Nunatsiavummiuk elder Tabea Murphy’s highly detailed and delicately rendered pen and coloured pencil drawings of daily life in Nunatsiavut are highly sought after in the region, so much so that a handful of her original graphics have been reproduced in limited print runs to meet demand. This work, depicting a woman in the midst of hand sewing a pair of kamiik (boots), is demonstrative of their sweet and quotidian appeal. Murphy, an expert seamstress, is intimately familiar with the concentration, steadiness and time required to produce such garments—knowledge that is embedded in the details of this piece.
With downcast eyes and braided hair held back with a charming blue bow, Murphy’s subject carefully sews the top edge of the kamik, her thimble-protected index finger expertly guiding her needle and thread. Nearby, her tools—pincushion, scissors, ulu (woman’s knife)— stand at the ready. Above, she is framed in a halo of sealskin. The composition is evocative of religious art works, where the heads and bodies of saints or other sacred figures are surrounded in nimbi, radiant circles often depicted in glowing gold. In Murphy’s work, however, gilt is substituted with something much more valuable. The stretched sealskin that surrounds the figure speaks both to the integral role of seal in Inuit communities, while nodding to it’s continued use and importance. Seal is present in the seamstress’ existing kamiik, in the ones she is in the process of creating and also at the ready for future needs. Kamiliuttuk (c. 1985), then, can be read as a tribute to the shared histories and futures of Inuit communities across Inuit Nunangat and their relationships to seals, emphasizing the continuity and cycle of these foundational creatures to Inuit life.