Koomuatuk Sapa Curley
Koomuatuk Sapa Curley, known widely as Kuzy, is originally from Kinngait Nunavut Canada and has over the years lived in Yellowknife, Toronto, and Ottawa where he has established himself as an artist of remarkable talent and potential. Coming from an artistic family that began with the renown Pitseolak Ashoona, he was taught at a young age to carve by his grandparents Qaqaq and Mayureak Ashoona while living at their outpost camp Satuqhituu. He continues to honour them and consciously chooses to carve the deeply rooted themes they taught him yet with a fresh vision that is all his own.
Technically proficient in diverse materials, from the distinctive Kinngait stone called serpentine to sea ivory, caribou antler, musk-ox horn, baleen and a wide range of marbles, alabasters, and granite, Kuzy creates sculptures of arctic wildlife with astonishing life-like precision and grace. As an artist, he constantly challenges himself to represent his subjects naturalistically while creating striking and balanced compositions.
As an emerging artist, Kuzy was awarded the Paul Qayatinuaq Award for Artistic Excellence in 2010. Many of his notable projects since then have been public art works awarded through grants and commissions. In 2014, he travelled to New Delhi India with artist Bill Nasogaluak to create a 2.5 metre inuksuk outside of the Canadian Consulate which was inaugurated by the Right Honourable David Johnston, Governor General, as a gift from the people of Canada to India. While the Community Outreach officer for the Mobilizing Inuit Culture Heritage grant, he brought together four artists to create a collaborative sculpture that was gifted to the Inuit Circumpolar Council at their assembly in 2014. As part of the Pan Am Games held in Toronto in 2015, he created Ahqahizu with Ruben Komangapik, a 26-ton monumental sculpture located at York University. In 2017 he won 1st place for Ninguaq amma Nanuq which is featured in the new Canadian High Arctic Research Station in Cambridge Bay. In 2020, he received the Nunavut of Government public art grant to create a large-scale carving of his great grandmother Pitseolak Ashoona for his home community of Kinngait. Most recently, he received the TRIAS Indigenous Art and Healing Award in 2022.
In addition to his own work, Kuzy, who is bilingual in Inuktitut and English, has recorded interviews with fellow artists and created a video homage to his great uncle Kiugak Ashoona in 2014. He was part of the curatorial team that included Taqralik Partridge, Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory, and Jocelyn Piirainen for the exhibition Tunnirrusiangit: Kenojuak Ashevak and Tim Pitsiulak at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2018.