Art exhibition Visualizing Arctic Voices

Art

See the art exhibition Visualizing Arctic Voices during this festival. Through images of the Arctic (approx. 1750-1930) the exhibition will tell and examine the traces that exist of Indigenous people’s biographies, culture and experiences in the face of colonization.

The images are linked to Indigenous peoples, landscapes and animals in Sápmi, Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), Inuit Nunangat (Northern Canada) and Alaska in a period of increased colonial pressure and contact. The images are tied together by the fact that they arose in meetings between people from different cultures, with different agendas and understandings of relationships to people, animals, nature and culture. The art exhibition examines how historical images can retrieved and potentially enrich the history and culture for Arctic Indigenous people today.

In the exhibition you will also encounter works by Sami artists, among others Outi Pieski, Anders Sunna, Raisa Porsanger, Áillohaš/Nils Aslak Valkeapää (1943-2001) og Aage Gaup (1943-2021), as well as the Greenlandic artist Bolatta Silis-Høegh and anthropologist, curator and artist Sven Haakanson. Their contributions to the exhibition invite conversations about repatriation, revitalization and ways to decolonize history.

Visualizing Arctic Voices is a collaboration between the Arctic Voices-project, Riddu Riđđu Festivála, Center of Northern peoples and RiddoDuottarMuseat, with further contribution by the Fridtjof Nansen Institute.

The exhibition has received funding from The Research Council of Norway, The Nordic Culture Fund, Fritt Ord, NAPA – Nordic Institute on Greenland and UiT The Arctic University of Norway's Equality and Diversity Committee.

Welcome to a journey through pictures of the Arctic that tell forgotten and unrecognized stories to the audience! We hope that the art exhibition will contribute to good conversations about revitalization, repatriation and methods of decolonizing history.

Exhibition catalogue: https://www.arcticvoices.space/exhibtion

Anders Sunna, Death Means Nothing for the Colors, 2009. Sámi Dáiddamagasiidna / Sámi Art Collections, RiddoDuottarMuseat, Kárášjohka. Photo: Håkon Holmgren Gabrielsen.

Outi Pieski, Rádje johtin I (Finnish: Rajan käynti I; English: Pacing the Borders I), 2014. Sámi Dáiddamagasiidna / Sámi Art Collections, RiddoDuottarMuseat, Kárášjohka. Photo: Håkon Holmgren Gabrielsen.