Provenance:

Private Collection, Vermont

Literature:

Marie Bouchard, Marion Tuu’luq, National Gallery of Canada, 2002, p. 32, p. 68 cat 19 for a related work

Note:

Marion Tuu'luq was born in a remote corner of the Arctic in the early 1900's. She lived a nomadic camp life for 50 years before settling in Baker Lake where she began to draw and sew her unique artworks.

Tuu'luq was the cousin of Jessie Oonark, who was four years older and one of her closest friends. They would often sew, draw, and laugh together, which affected their respective works. We imagine Tuu'luq and Oonark sitting together, laughing at the phallic-like noses protruding from the two heads in the centre of this textile. At each end, laughing faces directed towards the big-nosed men, is perhaps a depiction of the two women sharing an inside joke about someone in their camp.

Marie Bouchard notes in her exhibition catalogue that, according to Tuu'luq, Luke Anguhadluq was "always craving women", which was tremendously funny to the cousins. Oonark produced a work on cloth around the same time as this one with the same long, phallic-like nosed men.