Iqaluit sculptor’s receipt-wrapped work draws Ottawa attention to Nunavut food costs

When Jesse Tungilik began placing grocery receipts into a box, he was not keeping a record for tax time. He was saving fragments of everyday life that would become the outer skin of a sculpture now standing in the National Art Gallery in Ottawa.

From northern stores to a national stage

Tungilik, an artist from Iqaluit, collected receipts over the course of two years from trips to the Northern Store in Pangnirtung and the Northmart in Iqaluit. In 2019 he assembled those slips of paper into a roughly one-metre-tall figure of an Inuk man hunting a seal, an artwork he titled Feeding My Family. Hundreds of receipts envelop the figure; some still show prices that read like a ledger of daily life.

“I think it's actually gotten more poignant over time,”

The sentence above captures Tungilik’s own reflection on the piece and the changing cost of food. Items visible on the receipts include prices such as $3.59 for celery, $21.35 for shredded cheese and $19.99 for a pack of cigarettes — small, specific markers of expense that, when collected together, tell a larger story about household budgets.

Art that records a community’s struggle

Nunavut’s long-standing challenges with food insecurity are well known in the territory. Tungilik’s sculpture converts mundane proof-of-purchase slips into a public record: an arresting art object that links consumption, cost and culture. The work is intentionally literal — receipts as material — and intentionally metaphorical: the figure’s pose, hunting a seal, evokes traditional food practices set against the reality of buying groceries priced for an economy far to the south.

For Tungilik the piece has gained extra resonance over time. He points out that where the receipts once seemed to document expensive purchases, they now emphasise the rising cost of food across the territory.

Family ties on display in Ottawa

At the gallery, Tungilik’s sculpture sits near some of the institution’s best-known pieces. That proximity had special significance for him: his grandfather, Mark Tungilik, is represented in the gallery’s permanent exhibition by miniature carvings. Seeing their works placed near one another in a national collection added a personal and communal dimension to the achievement.

“It was extra special to see my work and his work in the same place,”

What the work means locally

For people in Iqaluit and across Nunavut, the sculpture is more than a statement in Ottawa — it is a mirror. It reflects the daily decisions households must make: which food to buy, what to prioritise, how long a paycheque will stretch. By transforming receipts into art, Tungilik also preserves physical evidence of those choices and the prices attached to them.

• Material: hundreds of grocery receipts collected over two years.
• Work: Feeding My Family, created in 2019 — a one-metre-tall sculpture of an Inuk man hunting a seal.
• Notable detail: visible prices on receipts reinforcing the message about rising costs.

Why this matters to readers

Art can translate lived experience into something accessible to a wider audience. In this case, a northern artist used a common item — the receipt — to make a national institution confront the reality of household economics in Nunavut. For local communities, the gallery placement amplifies a message that many residents already know: feeding a family in the North has particular financial challenges, and those challenges are getting sharper.

Tungilik’s work joins a broader cultural conversation about representation, traditional subsistence and contemporary pressures. It stands as an example of how local voices can carry their message to a national stage — and how a simple paper trail can become a powerful witness.

As the piece circulates in a national context, it invites viewers to read those receipts as more than numbers: they are markers of daily life in Nunavut, and a call to pay attention.