Eva Talooki Aliktiluk was born in 1927. A member of the inland Padlermiut, she spent the first three and a half decades of her life living off the land in the area west of Hudson Bay. When poor hunting and trapping forced Inuit to abandon their semi-nomadic lifestyle in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Talooki and her family moved to Arviat, becoming permanent residents of that coastal community. In the late 1960s she began making small stone and caribou antler sculptures for sale to the local co-op. 

In the late 1970s Talooki began dressing many of her sculptures in strings of beads, a practice she would continue for the rest of her career. Described by many as a gentle and soft-spoken woman, Talooki continued to carve until shortly before her death in 1995.
Although frequently categorized as a form of craft during her lifetime (owing to her innovative use of beads), Talooki's distinctive carvings of human faces and figures are today widely appreciated for their non-representational forms, sculptural expressiveness and idiosyncratic charm.

Exhibitions

• 3rd Salon Printemps, presented by Galerie Saint Merri
• A Woman's Vision, Art Space Gallery
• Art Inuit, Galerie Saint Merri
• Art Inuit, la Sculpture des Esquimaux du Canada, Presented by l'Iglou Art Esquimau, Douai at Chapelle de la Visitation, Thonon
• Art Inuit, la Sculpture des Esquimaux du Canada, Presented by l'Iglou Art Esquimau, Douai at Les Chiroux, Centre Culturel de la Wallonie, Liege
• Art Inuit, Sculpture des Esquimaux du Canada, Presented by l'Iglou Art Esquimau, Douai at Galerie La Poutre, Marseille
• Arviat: Eskimo Point, Marion Scott Gallery
• Eskimo Point, Inuit Gallery of Vancouver
• Eskimo Point/Arviat, Winnipeg Art Gallery
• Inspiration Four Decades of Sculpture, Marion Scott Gallery
• Inuit Sculpture 1982, The Raven Gallery
• Miniaturen, Inuit Galerie
• Mother & Child, Marion Scott Gallery
• Mother and Child: Sculpture and Prints, Albers Gallery
• Nagdjuk: Gift of the Caribou, Art Space Gallery
• New Miniature Sculpture, Gallery Phillip
• Our Hoods Are Full, Arctic Artistry
• Rugged and Profound - Sculpture from Eskimo Point, The Innuit Gallery of Eskimo Art
• Sixty Diminutive Eskimo Carvings, Images of the North
• Small Sculpture from Across the Arctic, The Innuit Gallery of Eskimo Art
• The Inuit Amautik: I Like My Hood To Be Full, Winnipeg Art Gallery
• The Swinton Collection of Inuit Art, Winnipeg Art Gallery
• The Treasured Monument, Marion Scott Gallery
• Women of the North: An Exhibition of art by Inuit Women of the Canadian Arctic, Marion Scott Gallery

Collections

• Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
• Canadian Guild of Crafts Quebec, Montreal
• Canadian Museum of Civilization, Hull
• Musee des beaux-arts de Montreal, Montreal
• Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg