Bowdoin College Museum of Art

This object is not in the BCMA collection. It was or is now on loan to the BCMA for exhibition.

Preview image of work. sperm whale tooth, Seal Tupilak 39112

Recommend keywords

Help us make our collections more accessible by providing keywords to describe this artwork. The BCMA uses the Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus to provide consistent keywords. Enter a keyword in the field below and you will be prompted with a list of possible matching AAT preferred terms.

Seal Tupilak

Export record as: Plain text | JSON | CDWA-Lite | VRA Core 4

Artist

Artist Unidentified (Inuit)

Title

Seal Tupilak

Creation Date

n.d.

Dimensions

4 1/8 x 2 x 3/4 in. (10.48 x 5.08 x 1.91 cm)

Object Type

carving

Medium and Support

sperm whale tooth

Credit Line

Gift of John P. Kline, on loan from The Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum

Copyright

This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s Copyright Terms and Conditions.

Although the concept of a tupilak has varied across Greenland Inuit cultures and throughout their long history, it consistently refers to an evil spiritual being in animal or human form. Suppression of magical practices by Christian missionaries in the eighteenth century resulted in the minimalist, almost abstract form of tupilak shown here. However, despite changes in their cultural usage, the distorted and chimeric figures preserve the culturally essential Inuit concepts of supernatural animation and transformation in an ambiguous combination of metaphor and magic. Dezsö’s work and the tupilak figures share a common engagement with the duality of visual experience and the complexity of bodies, providing a cultural space for considering the relationships between the body, power, and nature. What does the image of the body reveal or conceal about the being? What power does the body provide, and to whom? How does visual experience affect the relationship between humans and nature?