Joe Talirunili

Joe Talirunili lived as a nomadic hunter in the Arctic tundra of northern Quebec (Nunavik). Around the turn of the century, when Talirunili was a young boy, an ice floe bearing his extended family broke away; forty people crowded into a fragile sealskin-covered boat (umiak) and paddled desperately for days through crashing pack ice to reach the mainland.

This traumatic childhood ordeal became Talirunili's defining artistic motif. In the 1960s and 70s at Puvirnituq, he carved a series of monumental soapstone sculptures known as the "Migration Boats," packed with tight-knit rows of determined carved faces holding rifles and paddles. His sculptures are among the most valuable and recognized works in Canadian art history.