Omalluq: Pictures From My Life

Omalluq was one of a very few female artists from Kinngait who gained international recognition for their carvings.

“I will carve as long as I can breathe—maybe I will become a world famous carver.”

She became known for her sculptures of women in their many roles, both traditional and modern, and was particularly well-known for her depictions of women at work.

One of her carvings of a woman sewing a kamik (skin boot) is in the WAG-Qaumajuq collection and is featured in this exhibition.

An accident while carving with an electric grinder put an end to her carving career in the mid-1990s. It wasn’t until February 2013 that she began to create drawings, with the encouragement of Kinngait Studio Director at the time, Bill Ritchie.

She had begun drawing in the 1960s as a teenager, but her imaginative works were never translated into prints for the annual print collection. A whimsical graphite drawing, Spirit Angels, dating to 1961/62 was included in the McMichael Canadian Collection exhibition, Strange Scenes: Early Cape Dorset Drawings (1993).

In 2013, her first two drawings were of her daughter, Mary, and of her injured hand, which she titled Broken Hands Personal Experience. Sadly both Omalluq and Mary lost their battles with cancer in November 2014. In the two years before her death, Omalluq created the 19 drawings in this exhibition, purchased by the WAG in early 2015. Together they highlight the breadth of the artist’s thematic interests during this period.

Several drawings are detailed narratives showing the realities of community life, such as her life as a wife and a mother and the negative effects of pollution. The artistic context of Kinngait is seen in her drawing of an artist (probably Kananginak Pootoogook) working outside on a stone muskox. A young girl watches him from a window, possibly a personal memory of the inspiration generated by this respected artist in younger people in the community.

In an unusual still life drawing, she reflects upon My first carvings and tools (2014). Memories are also the source for another still life drawing, Store items I remember in the 1950s (2014). Three drawings are her interpretations of the story of the well-known south Baffin female shaman, Aliguq, shown with her seaweed helping spirits.

The Owl and the Raven (2013), interprets the traditional story of an owl who paints a raven black. Another work is a poignant tribute to her husband, Simionie, who died in 2012, two years before his wife and daughter. Omalluq has shown herself as a weeping presence above his grave, marked with “SIM” and his birth and death dates, 1943–2012.

This is the most significant, existing collection of Omalluq’s late drawings, and forcefully reveals the artist’s talent in a medium she only rediscovered in the last two years of her life. Maybe it will make you think what talents you have hidden inside you from years past?

Essay by Darlene Coward Wight

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