Karoo Ashevak

(1940 – October 19, 1974)

Karoo Ashevak was an Inuk sculptor who lived a nomadic hunting life in the Kitikmeot Region of the central Arctic before moving into Spence Bay, Northwest Territories (now Taloyoak, Nunavut) in 1960.[1] His career as an artist started in 1968 by participating in a government-funded carving program. Working with the primary medium of fossilized whale bone, Ashevak created approximately 250 sculptures in his lifetime, and explored themes of shamanism and Inuit spirituality through playful depictions of human figures, angakuit (shamans), spirits, and Arctic wildlife.

In 1970, the Canadian Eskimo Art Council held the Centennial competition in Yellowknife. Ashevak's sculptures won third prize in that competition, and he became a recognizable artist after his solo exhibition at the American Indian Art Centre in New York in 1973. Unlike other Inuit primitivist carvings, Ashevak's work abandoned cultural references and adopted a modern expressionistic style, which visually appealed to a broader audience than collectors of Inuit art.

An extensive collection of Ashevak's sculptures went on solo or group exhibitions at commercial galleries around the world, including Franz Bader Gallery at Washington, D.C., Lippel Gallery in Montreal, the Upstairs Gallery in Winnipeg and the Inuit Gallery in Toronto. Ashevak's works were also widely traded on the auction market. Despite his early death — he died in October 1974 from a house fire, Ashevak was crucial to the development of Inuit sculpture by visualizing an imaginative world with supernatural beings and shamanistic practices.