Profile: Mark Tungilik’s Miniatures
Our end-of-summer profile features miniature sculptures by Naujaat’s Mark Tungilik (1913-1986), one of the artists included in our current feature exhibition of monochrome works from Nunavut and beyond.
Although he produced works in a range of sizes, Tungilik is best known for his miniature depictions of people and animals pictured within the landscape. Featuring miniscule ivory figures positioned on stones that mimic rocky shores and steep cliffs, these tiny pieces ironically convey the enormity of the northern landscape, an environment in which people and animals are dwarfed by nature’s vast distances and immense scales. The figures themselves are rendered non-naturalistically: with oversized heads and stalky limbs, Tungilik’s people are as much representations of the human personality as they are approximations of actual visual appearances.
The works in the profile range from minimal compositions containing one or two figures to more complex images comprising a combination of people and animals. One of the sparest works in the exhibition features two people walking over uneven terrain, their diminutive forms appearing as two tiny silhouettes on the distant horizon. Less minimal is Tungilik’s depiction of a hunting party grouped around a large seal upon what we imagine is the sea ice. The differing sizes of the standing figures might indicate the presence of children. More complex still is his sculpture picturing a cliff dotted with tiny nesting birds. At the base of the busy rookery are several people in a row facing outwards, likely a family on an egg gathering outing.
Not all of Tunglik’s miniatures are aimed at showing the vastness of the northern landscape and the corresponding smallness of the human presence within it. Included in the profile is a sculpture in which Tungilik, who was also an exceptional observer of Arctic animal life, portrays a polar bear on a rising slope, the drooping body of a caught seal hanging from the predator’s powerful jaw.
Photo of Mark Tungilik: Norman Zepp, 1982
