Description
Ikayukta Tunnillie
Kinngait (Cape Dorset), Nunavut (1911–1980)
Ikayukta Tunnillie was an Inuit artist from Kinngait (Cape Dorset), Nunavut, whose drawings and prints helped shape the early decades of the Cape Dorset print tradition. After spending much of her life travelling and living on the land, she settled in Kinngait in 1970 and began drawing later in life, encouraged by her daughter, the artist Kakulu Sagiatuk.
Despite beginning her artistic career in her late fifties, Tunnillie quickly developed a distinctive style characterized by decorative patterning, expressive colour, and imaginative depictions of birds, animals, and traditional Inuit life. Her work was selected regularly for the annual Cape Dorset print collections throughout the 1970s, where its strong graphic quality and individual vision found an appreciative audience. Today, her prints are valued for their originality and for the remarkable achievement of an artist who found her creative voice later in life while contributing to one of the most influential periods in Kinngait printmaking.
