Lot 69
RUTH QAULLUARYUK (1932-) QAMANI’TUAQ (BAKER LAKE)
Untitled (Colourful Vegetation), c. late 1990s

stroud and embroidery floss, 36 x 18.5 in (91.4 x 47 cm)
signed, "ᑲᐅᓗᐊᔪ".

Provenance
A Toronto Collection.

Daughter of Luke Anguhadluq (see lot 67), Ruth Qaulluaryuk relocated to Qamani’tuaq in her late teens where, in addition to drawing, she monetized her skills as a seamstress by making handicrafts at the newly established craft centre. As she refined her craft, her works turned increasingly toward abstracted depictions of a familiar motif in Inuit art: the land. The present untitled wall hanging, a beautiful jumble of texture and colour, bears witness to the dense and kaleidoscopic variety of a land that many “southerners” think of as barren. The muted grey ground of the work is dramatically embroidered almost in its entirety, in colours that are too variegated to name. Qaulluaryuk invented a completely new way of seeing the land around her; her hangings are rhapsodies on the theme of the Arctic landscape.

References
For a similar work see Ingo Hessel, Arctic Spirit: Inuit Art from the Albrecht Collection at the Heard Museum (Phoenix: Heard Museum/Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2006), p. 64. See also Darlene Coward Wight, Creation and Transformation: Defining Moments in Inuit Art (Winnipeg Art Gallery/Douglas & McIntyre, 2012), cat. 95.