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Legends

Artist Kiawak Ashoona, OC, RCA (1933 - 2014)

This item is available. Please contact the Gallery.

Kinngait (Cape Dorset)
Serpentine, Sinew
22.5” x 11” x 11”

Kiawak Ashoona’s Legends, captures a moment of powerful spiritual metamorphosis. Carved from a single piece of serpentine with rich green inclusions, the work presents a falcon crouched low to the earth, its gaze sharp and forward. Standing atop the falcon's back, turned in the opposite direction, is a shaman, her form caught mid-transformation. Her human body, wrapped in an amauti, gives way to the avian—her head now that of a falcon, beak agape and eyes wide, as if in surprise or awe at the process unfolding.


A third presence emerges from the hood of the shaman’s amauti: a fledgling falcon, its tiny beak and curious eyes echoing the alertness of the adult falcon below. This subtle yet poignant detail affirms the shaman’s identity as a woman, referencing the maternal role Inuit women play in carrying their children in their hoods. The shaman’s arms are raised, mitted hands pressed against either side of her face in a gesture of tension or revelation, while a loop of sinew binds her right forearm—perhaps a tether between her human self and the animal spirit she is becoming. A deeply spiritual work, Legends is a testament to the fluid boundaries between human and animal, mother and guide, body and spirit in Inuit cosmology.