They are tired of the prejudices against Sami art: "Not just activism and nature romance"

- That it was presented as activist is not just the fault of Sami art.

These are choices that others have made for us.

This is something we have been aware of and wanted to work with, says Carola Grahn, curator and artist.

She has curated the exhibition together with Maria Ragnestam.

The ambition has been to show the breadth of contemporary Sami art.

Here are colorful lashes by Outi Pieski, a bone crown reminiscent of reindeer slaughter and forced relocations by Máret Ànne Saras or Synnøve Persen's paintings of the light of the polar night. 

- As a curator, active and resident in Sápmi, it is clear that Sami art contains a variety of expressions and that it is not just activist or nature romantic, says Maria Ragnestam, curator and artist.

Depicts climate change

Britta Marakatt-Labba is one of the artists.

She hit internationally in 2017 at the world's largest art exhibition, Documenta 14 in Kassel, and is known for her detailed embroideries with motifs from Sami history.

- I think a lot about what happens to the climate, but I also work with Sami mythology that possesses a lot of wisdom, she says. 

Stoarbma / Storm is one of the works on display at Sven Harry's Art Museum.

It depicts how humans have harmed nature.

- When I started with these climate images 15 years ago, it was not as obvious and current as today.

Then I had, among other things, made a picture called "The ice broke" and exactly a month later the ice broke when reindeer herders tore reindeer in the Jokkmokk area.

Several hundred reindeer ended up under the ice and drowned, says Britta Marakatt-Labba.

Racial biology and AI technology 

The artist Erika Stöckel works with ceramics and is based on racial biology and AI technology when she creates her sculptures.

- It is a female body that is not the one we are pressured into in the media.

In the work Input / Hidden / Output, Stöckel has investigated mechanisms that create normative bodies.

- I have started from the then way of categorizing people and today's AI techniques and how we also use it in a way to categorize people, then my Sami body becomes a bridge between the different systems, says Erika Stöckel.