Josie Papialook (1918–1996)

Regarded by many in his town as an eccentric, [Papialuk] once said that his best art occurs when he writes his name in the snow because ‘it goes into the air and stays forever.’”

(Marybelle Mitchell in Inuit Art Quarterly)

ROOTS

Born in 1918, at Issuksiuvit Lake, near Puvirnituq.

WHEN AND HOW HE GOT STARTED

Papialuk contributed drawings to Puvirnituq’s first print collection in 1962

MEDIA

Drawing, printmaking, and some sculpture.

THEMES

Storytelling, animals, people, humour, and hunger. Papialuk’s artwork also included tangible and intangible elements. Marybelle Mitchell says: “He often depicted the wind in his drawings with wiggly lines; footprints would trail behind a figure ‘to show how they got there’” (Mitchell 2004:19). Mitchell also says that he showed a “great fascination with his name, sometimes utilizing it as the sole image in a drawing.”

UNIQUENESS

Papialuk demonstrated a conceptual awareness. He also devised his own conventions of communicating important, yet intangible, landscape elements such as wind, the movement of people and animals, sound, rain, and temperature. Rather than carving away imperfections in stone, he often circled them, and occasionally carved stitches around them (Mitchell 1997:40).

SIGNIFICANT ACHIEVEMENTS

Papialuk was one of the few Inuit artists to ever have a solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada: Every picture tells a story (2003–2004).

ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT

Sculpture eventually became secondary to Papialuk’s graphic art. He was one of the first Puvirnituq artists to get involved in printmaking and to introduce the use of colour in his stonecut prints. Papialuk was a key contributor to the community’s print collection from the 1960s to the 1980s.

FIRST GAINED ATTENTION

in Eskimo Sculpture, an exhibition at the Manitoba Legislative Building in Winnipeg in 1967.