A new show of the artist’s work at the Art Gallery of Ontario reveals the past and present tensions in his work
When the Inuvialuk sculptor David Ruben Piqtoukun was about five years old, he was bundled onto a plane by Catholic missionaries along with several other children and flown uncomprehendingly hundreds of kilometres across the Northwest Territories to attend a residential school. He calls it “the abduction” and one of his carvings now showing at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto makes reference to that event.
Piqtoukun’s work as a carver and sculptor, from 1972 to the present, is one of hybridization. He is both a modernist and a traditionalist, developing his own contemporary vocabulary to tell ancestral stories, using metal as well as stone, antler and bone. And, as the shaman metamorphosizes into a muskox, seal or raven, the stories themselves are all about hybrids.
In some ways, you could just position him as a minor modernist, sourcing materials from around the world and taking inspiration from a global movement. The curved armatures in which he mounts some of his larger stone orbs and masks look like pieces by Joan Miro or Alexander Calder; his voids recall Henry Moore., for example, is a pyramid-shaped musical instrument made of African opal and antler, with a hole for a handle, and marked with the treble clef.
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