Tarralik Duffy

Load Photo © the Artist

Biography

Tarralik Duffy is a writer, multidisciplinary artist and designer from Salliq (Coral Harbour), NU,
whose work centres on contemporary Inuit culture and her experiences as an Inuk living
between her arctic island home and city life in the South. She works across media, regularly
incorporating drawing, photography, sculpture, textiles, printmaking and digital mediums into her
practice.

In her art practice, Duffy draws from pop culture as well as her cultural heritage and Inuktut,
often playing with language to create double meanings and a playful tongue-in-cheek. In Inuit
Pop Art (2015), she painted the iconic blue Pepsi can but replaced the English letters with
Inuktut syllabics to literally create pop art. Duffy is also influenced by the stories and skills her
grandparents shared with her when she was young. She named her jewellery and design label,
Ugly Fish, after her grandmother’s Inuktitut nickname, kanajuq or “ugly fish.” The jewellery
she creates uses materials salvaged from her home territory, including beluga vertebrae,
baleen, antler and seal skin, and has been shown in fashion events and gallery settings across
Canada. In 2022 Duffy expanded her practice to the field of soft sculpture, using her textile skills
to produce both oversized and life sized versions of objects such as Pepsi cans, jerry cans and
dice.

Duffy is also an accomplished writer. She won the Sally Manning Award in 2014 for her story
“Don’t Cry Over Spilled Beads” and her writing has been included in Up Here as well as above & beyond. The 2018 essay she wrote about Inuit self-portraiture for Inuit Art Quarterly was
featured in the annual Best Canadian Essays publication. Duffy has been featured as an artist in
many publications, including having her work appear on the cover of the Winter 2018 issue of
IAQ. Duffy won the Kenojuak Ashevak Memorial Award in 2021. In 2023 her work was
commissioned for two major solo shows: Let’s Go Quickstop at the Art Gallery of Ontario in
Toronto and Gasoline Rainbows at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in Manitoba.