Palaya Qiatsuk

Inuit

Palaya Qiatsuq was born in Cape Dorset in 1965 and began carving around 1977. He learned to carve from his father, the well-known sculptor and print maker Lukta Qiatsuk. Palaya works in soapstone and bone, and carves each sculpture with much attention to detail.

I like to carve transformations. That’s one of my favourite themes, and shamanism… when I do transformation or shamanism carvings, I hope the younger people will see the carving in a book or in a gallery. I want them to know that these traditions have to be carried out. How do I put this? They have to know that our ancestors had a hard time to live, to hunt. Sometimes they were starving. Those carvings are important to me and I want to show these younger people, and others, that this happened before.”