PRESENTATION: Anders Sunna-Illegal Spirits of Sápmi
Anders Sunna is a Swedish Sámi artist known for incorporating a strong political point of view into his artwork. His work is often focusing on Sámi history and his family’s long-standing conflict with the county administrative board’s reindeer husbandry delegation. In his work, Sunna uses thick layers of color, graffiti techniques, collage, and prints with motifs depicting oppression of the Sámi, including forced relocations and photographs from the Swedish State Institute for Racial Biology.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Moderna Museet Archive
For the first time since its acclaimed premier showing at the 2022 Venice Biennale, Anders Sunna’s “Illegal Spirits of Sápmi” is now on view at Moderna Museet Malmö. In this monumental work of art, Anders Sunna chronicles his family’s half-century-long conflict with Swedish authorities. The piece measures around 20 meters in length, and the narrative is told in five chapters from the 1970s until today, with one large painting per decade. The paintings are inserted into a wooden structure that also holds an archive of all the legal cases the family has been involved in. Visitors are welcome to browse through the many binders, which contain thousands of documents. The disputes that have marked the lives of three generations of the Sunna family have their roots in the 1971 Reindeer Husbandry Act and how it came to be interpreted. The counterparty has primarily been Norrbotten County Administration, but in later years, also the Sámi Parliament. Anders Sunna describes how, as a consequence of the conflicts, the family’s reindeer were forcibly relocated, a 30-km (about 18-mile) fence was constructed to prevent the reindeer from going to their natural grazing lands, Sámi villages were pitted against each other, and the family lost their right to engage in reindeer husbandry. “I remember how worried my mother was when my dad and his brothers were out in the forest where the reindeer were. She paced around and grew increasingly anxious the longer it took…she wondered if they would come home at all or if they would be found shot. That’s how bad it was at its worst” (from the artist’s comments about the painting “Area Infected”). Colors and figures crowd, as in a complex game of joints, the representation of an articulated scene which, by virtue of the formal choice of installation, makes the narrative interesting and mysterious. In one of the different episodes of the extensive work, a group of Sámi seems intent on a dialogue: the protagonists are depicted wearing traditional clothes, with bright colors and complex embroidery; the group is approached by a man in formal clothes, perhaps wearing an official communication… The faces are never defined, the small white spots of paint hide the features and entrust the recognition of roles and actions to the posture and clothes alone. Through backgrounds of color in which the materiality varies from more precise areas to areas in which the color becomes more material and the shapes more sketchy, the Sámi tradition emerges in the paintings of the series. The artist Anders Sunna, defining himself as a guerrilla reindeer herder, tells in his practice his identity and the struggle carried out for the protection of the rights of the Sámi, especially regarding the breeding of reindeer, often hindered by the different governments that manage the areas inhabited by the population. Each layer of color and representation corresponds to different events in their history: in this detail it is possible to see a reference to the implementation of the 1971 law in which Sweden and Norway limited the hunting and breeding of reindeer, despite this being the activity on which the different Sámi communities rely. “Illegal Spirits of Sápmi” was first exhibited during the 2022 Venice Biennale. The Nordic Pavilion had been transformed into the Sámi Pavilion, with Pauliina Feodoroff, Máret Ánne Sara, and Anders Sunna as participating artists. The project, which was undertaken at the behest of the OCA–Office for Contemporary Art Norway– celebrated the indigenous Sámi culture and the land area of Sápmi, whose boundaries cross over Norway, Sweden, and Finland as well as part of Russia. In 2022, “Illegal Spirits of Sápmi” was acquired for Moderna Museet’s permanent collection.
Photo: Anders Sunna, Installation view, Illegal Spirits of Sápmi, Chapter 3, 2023 Photo: HeleneToresdotter / Moderna Museet ©Anders Sunna Bildupphovsrätt 2023
Info: Curator: Joa Ljungberg, Moderna Museet Malmö, Turbine Hall, Ola Billgrens plats 2–4, Malmö, Sweeden, Duration: 28/10/2023-28/1/2024 Days: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-17:00, Thu 11:00-19:00, www.modernamuseet.se/
