Additional Images

Provenance:

Private Collection, Hamilton, ON

Note:

Very little information is readily available on the early Kangiqliniq artist Vital Okoktok. Clearly an artist of strong and consistent vision, Okoktok’s work is often marked, as here, by a brute power. The artist appears to have employed a largely consistent body of stylistic devices sometimes suggestive of a spiritual or shamanistic subject matter.

While the motif of the “totem” pole is well known to have been introduced to Inuit artists in the 20th century, its varied use by Okoktok and other artists suggests a more complex history. [1.] Okoktok’s human and animal figures are often physically linked together, sometimes resting in “totem” pole-like stacks, or emanating from a single mass—linked together with small points of contact in vertical web-like compositions of meaning and form on whose significance we can only speculate. One of the few accessible illustrations of Okoktok’s work can be found in Sculpture of the Eskimo by George Swinton, where a closely related work, dated 1963, can be seen illustrated on page 213, plate 637.

(1) Houston, James. Eskimo Handicrafts. Montreal: The Canadian Handicrafts Guild & the Dept. of Resources & Development, 1951. p. 9.

Related works:

See: Swinton, George. Sculpture of the Eskimo. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd. 1972. p. 213, pl. 637.