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Niviaksiak (1908–1959) was a sculptor and one of the first Inuit artists to experiment with printmaking when it was introduced by James Houston through the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative (now known as Kinngait Studios). His graphic work garnered much interest from the south in the 1950s due to his use of abstraction, negative space, and a combination of perspectives that allowed for multiple viewpoints within a single image.

Most of Niviaksiak’s prints were monochrome and made from sealskin stencils. They are part of the early experiments with printmaking in Kinngait before other methods and materials, such as paper stencils, became commonplace.

The polar bear was a recurring subject in Niviaksiak’s prints and carvings. While on a polar bear hunt with a friend in 1959, Niviaksiak fell to the ground and mysteriously died, cutting short his career as an artist. The community has explained his passing as being a result of offending the spirit of the great polar bear. Following his death, a dozen of his remaining drawings were translated into prints for the first Cape Dorset Annual Print Collections in 1959 and 1960.

Much of Niviaksiak’s life was spent hunting and living on the land near Kinngait (Cape Dorset) with his wife, Kunu, also known as Koonoo, an artist and craftswoman, along with their sons, Kiatshuk and Pisteolak Niviaksiak, who became carvers and printmakers themselves.

Niviaksiak’s work has been exhibited across Canada and internationally. His prints and sculptures and can be found in the collections at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, the Canadian Museum of History, Gatineau, the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, among many others. In 1959, when two of Niviaksiak’s prints were acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, his print Polar Bear Cub appeared on a MoMA Christmas card. Polar Bear Cub is now considered one of the most reproduced images that came out of Kinngait Studios.