Jamasee Pitseolak

Whereas most Inuit artists produce sculptures from single blocks of stone, Jamasee Pitseolak works like a collagist, painstakingly assembling his images from individually carved pieces of stone, ivory antler and horn. Instead of traditional images of hunters and wildlife, Pitseolak often represents distinctly modern objects—motorcycles, machinery with moveable parts, guitars and tables with chairs. The majority of these works are marked by a playful charm, a quality reflected also in his sculptures’ titles, many of which are based on puns. Pitseolak’s prints and drawings are similarly unconventional, drawing on a range of formal and thematic interests.

Jamasee Padluq Pitseolak was born in 1968 in Kinngait on southern Baffin Island. The son of artists Mark and Ookpik Pitseolak, he began carving when he was 8 or 9. One of his earliest influences was his grandfather, Peter Pitseolak, a well- known carver and photographer from the Kinngait area. Feeling a lack of connection with more traditional themes, he began incorporating unconventional modern imagery into his expression in the late 1990s. Pitseolak’s work is in many private and public collections, including the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Canadian Museum of History and the National Gallery of Canada.