A tupilak was never meant to be seen. It was assembled from animal and human parts, animated by ritual, and sent after an enemy — and it turned on its maker if the enemy was stronger. The thing you can hold is younger than that: when William Thalbitzer asked at Ammassalik in 1905–06, the shaman Mitsivarniannga carved him three, because the real one could not be handed over.

So the visual language is carving, not myth. Antler, sperm-whale tooth, walrus ivory, soapstone, driftwood — pale material cut with a knife and rubbed with dark pigment that stays in the grooves and wears off wherever a hand has held it. Grimacing mouth, coiled body, limbs fused between animal and person. Small objects, described in accession lines.