Manasie Akpaliapik (1955- ) was born in a hunting camp near Arctic Bay on northern Baffin Island. He learned to carve from his grandparents Peter and Kanangnaq. Akpaliapik moved to Montreal in 1980, where he began to carve seriously; six years later, he moved to Toronto and has lived there or nearby ever since, though he travels home to Arctic Bay whenever he can to collect stories, to collect whalebone and to “recharge his batteries.” He has utilized both ivory and stone, but it is most famous for his work in whalebone; he succeeds in carving ivory miniatures and colossal whale vertebrae with the same degree of sensitivity. Manasie’s works often exhibit a higher degree of emotional or psychological tension than their themes would suggest.

 Manasie Akpaliapik is a preeminent Inuit sculptor who belongs to a small group of post-contemporary Inuit sculptors. This group of young artists who live and work in or frequently visit south, have developed, as opposed the majority of Inuit artists who are still working within “traditional style”, to a more professional, articulate and experimental approach to art-making. This post-contemporary tendency is more an attitude than actual movement or new “period” in Inuit art, yet there is a certain generational shift. These relatively young sculptors, often with the full knowledge that their understanding of Inuit culture is somewhat more tenuous than that of their parents and grandparents, view art as a vehicle for aesthetic self-expression, as a means of getting and keeping in touch with their culture, as a viable and worthwhile profession, and occasionally as a path towards personal redemption. Many of their works represent a “mannerist” approach, in the sense of devoting a greater attention to aesthetics and having a self-conscious virtuosity and a taste for the unusual.