Two Headed Dog Chasing Qiviuq

Description

Condition:          No condition to report.

Description by Artist:     No description by artist found.

Notes from DaVic Gallery:   The Legend of Kiviuq is multi-layered with life moral, ethics and survival lessons.  Comparable to Homer’s Odysseus, Kiviuq is a wandering hero, a hunter who encounters and survives ever-present danger in harsh and unpredictable conditions in the Arctic.  Kiviuq is a great traveler, mapping the world as the Inuit knew it from his home where his parents waited for his return to the place where salt water did not freeze.  He travelled over mountain ranges and huge water bodies where the goose people wintered.  No matter how difficult hi voyage, he would come home singing.  Dangers of life in the Arctic reflect the dark side of this tales with cannibalism and murder. We also see beauty in Kiviuq’s bright heroism as master of the kayak and as the only person kind that was kind to an orphan.   He’s away from home for so long that doesn’t know how to measure how long.  Simon Tookoome represents yet another adventure in Kiviuq’s travels where this comes across fights and kills Allulla’q, the two-headed dog.

The composition in this print by Tookoome represents one moment in time and space in the story if Kiviuq. There is no movement perceived or activity, only a complex representation of the confrontation between the hero and the two-headed beast with a simple to recognize body of a dog.  The head seems represented with a very complex symmetrical figure with 4 human heads (Kiviuq) and 2 half dog figures.