Retrospective: Nick Sikkuark

Inuk artist's Works Endear and Repel

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Caribou antlers bloom from boney wrists to form broad, reaching hands. Look once and they may seem comical and cartoon-like. Look again, and maybe they’re kind of menacing and groping. That unique duality, says National Gallery of Canada exhibition curator Christine Lalonde, is key to Inuk artist Nick Sikkuark’s sculptures, prints and paintings. 

“His creatures can have gnashing teeth and a gaping mouth and claws, and you may be hesitant to approach it,” she says. “But the longer you look, there’s something quite human they’re going through…so instead of being repulsed by this creature, you are coaxed by Sikkuark into empathizing with them.”

A decade in the making, Nick Sikkuark: Humour and Horror is at the National Gallery of Canada through March 24, 2024.

It is the first retrospective devoted to this acclaimed Inuit artist’s work and includes more than 100 of his books, drawings, sculptures and paintings that span four decades of a career shaped by growing up on the land with his mother, father and siblings.  

Born in 1943 in Garry Lake, Nunavut, Sikkuark was self-taught, first carving thumb-sized miniatures of polar bears and other Arctic wildlife. In the 1970s, he began using the materials at hand such as bone, whisps of fur and antlers to make the fantastical, frequently shaman-like sculptures he became internationally known for. Sikkuark later created another significant body of works on paper, including a series of books he wrote and illustrated for a Northwest Territories’ Department of Education program to revive Indigenous languages. Sikkuark died in 2013, aged 70, but Lalonde was able to meet with him in 2011 in Kugaaruk, Nunavut for discussions on mounting the retrospective.

She recalls a man who was interested but initially cautious; generous in sharing details about his life and his thoughts on art, and — as they got to know one another — “a little bit playful with me too," she laughs. “He was serious, but his sense of humour was also apparent in every conversation.” 

In other words, Sikkuark personified “the incredible quality of his artwork,” she notes. “He never seemed to be just one thing, just as multiple things make his work unique.” 

Lalonde specifically points to Sikkuark’s technical ability and his ability to “see things” in bone and other materials. 

“An artist may look at a vertebra and twist it this way or that way and it becomes a flying shaman. Nick would take it another way, fuse it with another piece and it’s something that you’ve never seen before.”

In one of their conversations, Sikkuark told Lalonde, “I like to make faces ugly or funny so people will look into the details and wonder what I have carved, to see and be puzzled by my carving. The scarier the better.”

Sikkuark had been on Lalonde’s radar as an exceptional and leading artist from the Kitikmeot region of Nunavut for some time prior to mounting the retrospective. But it wasn’t until she saw a small piece of his at an auction house more than a decade ago that she realized, “wow, we really haven’t been understanding all there is to know about this artist.”

She says that pivotal sculpture – Untitled Grave Scene – is a rare depiction of a burial site, “very carefully arranged with great attention to being accurate in its detail.”

Crafted from a piece of whale bone and small enough to hold in your hand, Lalonde says Sikkuark wanted to record the protocol around how Inuit were buried. “For example, that their feet would be placed in a certain direction so that they would rise to the sun,” she says. “That was the intent — to show how Inuit reacted to death and how they went through a practice of mourning and healing.”

Today, Nick Sikkuark is buried in Kugaaruk, according to Inuit tradition, above ground, looking out on the land that nurtured and inspired him, even as his work continues to inspire and connect people.

“The important thing when looking at Sikkuark’s art,” Lalonde says, "Is to look, then look again, and then go in for a closer look, to let those waves of understanding happen, and emanate from his works.” ■

Nick Sikkuark: Humour and Horror is at the National Gallery of Canada from November 17, 2023 to March 24, 2024.

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