VICTORIA MAMNGUQSUALUK (1930-2016) QAMANI'TUAQ (BAKER LAKE)

Untitledduffle, felt, floss, and thread, 28.25 x 33.75 in (71.8 x 85.7 cm)

signed, "ᒪᒍᓯᐊᓗ".

Provenance

Private Collection, Ottawa.

Victoria Mamnguqsualuk and her young family relocated from the Back River area to Qamani’tuaq in 1963. Within a short time, with the encouragement of her mother Jessie Oonark, Mamnguqsualuk began participating in embryonic arts projects in the growing settlement - first carving, then creating garments, and finally making drawings and textile hangings. She became extremely proficient in the latter two mediums, and is now considered to be one of Baker Lake’s greatest artists. In this beautiful hanging a muskox and hunter confront each other while a polar bear stalks a winter camp. While the man building the igloo seems oblivious, the woman kneeling outside is clearly terrified. We are not sure if the two scenes are related. Mamnguqsualuk frequently depicted scenes of animal-human confrontation, but here the composition looks almost serene, with its roughly circular arrangement of figures and a relatively muted palette broken only by the splash of bright colour in the form of the kneeling woman. Squaring the circle, so to speak, is the artist’s trademark border treatment: a ‘Greek chorus’ of spirit heads who watch over the action from all sides. Mamnguqsualuk was a consummate storyteller, in both her drawings and her finely sewn wallhangings.

Literature: For examples of wall hangings by Mamnguqsualuk see Ingo Hessel, Arctic Spirit: Inuit Art from the Albrecht Collection at the Heard Museum (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre / Phoenix: Heard Museum, 2006), cats. 110, 185; Marion Scott Gallery, Works on Cloth: Imagery by Artists of Baker Lake, Nunavut (Vancouver: 2002), pp. 26-27; Walker’s Auctions, Ottawa, May 2012, Lot 79; Nov. 2015, Lot 143; Nov. 2016, Lot 42. For several illustrations of drawings by the artist of bear-human confrontations see Charles Moore, ed., Keeveeok, Awake!: Mamnguqsualuk and the Rebirth of Legend at Baker Lake (Edmonton: Ring House Gallery, University of Alberta), 1986.