Additional Images

Provenance:

Private collection, Toronto, ON

Note:

The joy of hearing stories told by his mother and grandmother about shamanism and traditional beliefs influenced a young David Ruben Piqtoukun and has spawned images recurring throughout the artist's career. In this work Piqtoukun has approached a familiar subject, that of a low-flying shaman, with particular finesse and attention to detail. These images of flight appear throughout the oeuvres of Piqtoukun and his brother Abraham Anghik, and are said to originate in the supposed otherworldly travels of their grandfather, a reputed shaman. [1]

As elsewhere in the artist’s work, the eyes of the shaman are made of red pipe stone (catlinite) inset into the face of a being who appears transfigured and mask-like, consistent with imagery found in ceremonial and ritual masks in the Western Arctic, with which Piqtoukun would be familiar.

(1) Darlene Coward Wight, Between Two Worlds: David Ruben Piqtoukun, (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Gallery of Art, 1996), 3.


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