Judas Ullulaq
A gaunt face, almost skeletal, with hollow eyes, heavy creases etched into its cheeks and exposed, crooked teeth. Is it a monster? Possibly. Yet the face is not frightening. The work is called Spirit, but could it represent something else entirely? Something rooted in human history, rather than the spirit realm?
Judas Ullulaq (1937–1999), the artist whose careful handiwork is at play, has made a figure that seems lonely—more lost than malevolent. Ullulaq lived and travelled throughout the Netsilik region during his lifetime. The region, particularly Qikiqtaq (King William Island), NU, is rich with stories, and some of these Ullulaq recounted in expressive sculptures in stone and whale bone. Though long ignored by those outside Inuit Nunangat, the inhabitants of Qikiqtaq held stories of one of the most widely researched “mysteries” of the nineteenth century: the fate of the Franklin expedition and the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, whose entire crew perished in their attempts to navigate the Northwest Passage. Tales of starving and malnourished survivors were passed down through a rich oral tradition. In fact, it was Inuit knowledge and stories that figured largely in the discovery of the Erebus and the Terror in 2014 and 2016 respectively.
Ullulaq is said to have made a sculpture depicting Qiqtutunuaqruq, the angakkuq (shaman) who encountered the explorer Sir John Ross on the Boothia Peninsula in the early 1830s, an event that occurred over 100 years before Ullulaq’s birth. Perhaps the artist was told of this encounter and felt compelled to record it. He also likely heard stories of the Franklin survivors, sickly and scared, and this carving may be one of them. Maybe it is a spirit. Or, perhaps, it is both.