Arctic Highways
– Unbounded Indigenous People

I konstutställningen «Arctic Highways – Unbounded Indigenous People» tar urfolkskonstnärer från arktiskt område oss med på en resa i kultur og samhällsliv. Resan sträcker sig från det förflutna in i framtiden – utan gränser. Verken är en del av den omfattande utställningen Arctic Highways, som är en permanent utställning på Mötesplats Granö. Läs mer om Arctic Highways på: www.motesplatsgrano.se/arctic-highways-virtual

Britta Marakatt-Labba, b. 1951, was born and raised in a reindeer-herding family. Their winter pasture was in Swedish Sápmi, and the summer grazing period was spent on the Norwegian side of Sápmi. She is educated at the School of Design and Crafts at the University of Gothenburg (HDK).

Marakatt-Labba work with narrative, or storytelling, embroidery. Her images are miniature worlds created with needle and thread. The images depict various events and scenes from everyday life, mythology, political reflections and tales about Sámi culture and history.

Her work has been exhibited at the following venues: National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; KODE (art museums and composer homes) Bergen, Norway; Malmö Art Museum, Sweden; Uppsala Art Museum, Sweden, Nord Norsk Kunstmuseum (museum for northern Norwegian art), RidduDuottarMuseat, Karasjokk, Norway, Korundi – Rovaniemi Art Museum, Finland, The Anna Nordlander Skellefteå Museum, Sweden and Skissernas Museum, Lund, Sweden.

Bild: Britta Marakatt-Labba, Motstånd, detalj.
Foto: Carl Johan Utsi © Britta Marakatt-Labba

Tomas Colbengtson, b. 1957 grew up in a small saemie village near Björkvattnet in Tärna, under the polar circle of Sweden. In his artwork, he asks how colonial heritage has changed Indigenous lives and landscapes, both of the saemie and other Indigenous peoples. Having lost his mother tongue south saemie language, he works with visual art, using saemie history and collective memory as the sourse to his art. He is continuously experimenting with new forms of media and material, from overlay glass and metal printing to etching and digital art forms. This way, he seeks to assemble a language to formulate the loss but also rejuvenation of saemie identity.

He is initiator of one of the first art residence for indigenous artists Sápmi salasta / Sápmi embraces. His work has been featured in numerous international exhibitions. He is represented in the new National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway and Sami-parlament Karasjok Norway.

Bild: Tomas Colbengtson, The Children of the Sun
Foto: Elisabeth Ohlson © Tomas Colbengtson

Dan Jåma, b. 1953, filmmaker and still photographer. He grew up in a reindeer-herding family in Norway. At the age of 23 he was employed at the Swedish National Television as a cinemato­grapher. Nineteen years later he started to work as a freelancer to be able to work with still photography and to direct his own films.

Jåma also worked as a teacher in television journalism at the Sámi University of Applied Sciences in Kautokeino, Norway. Dan has been chairman at the South Sámi Museum in Snåsa, Saemien Sijte, Norway. Dan is represented in RiddoDuottarMuseat, The Sámi Museum in Karasjok.

Bild längst upp och längst ned:
Dan Jåma, Leave No Trace, stillbilder ur film © Dan Jåma