Deep Reading with Sápmi - A Conversation with Britta Marakatt-Labba and Maria Lind
We warmly invite you to participate in Deep Reading with Sápmi, an online seminar series hosted by Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH) in preparation for SAAR 2025. The Summer Academy will take place in Kiruna (Northern Sámi: Giron; Finnish: Kiiruna; Meänkieli: Kieruna), Sápmi in collaboration with KIN Museum of Contemporary Art/Maria Lind. The four online sessions offer an opportunity to engage with Sámi perspectives on knowledge, place, and artistic practice before we gather in August.
Mer om evenemanget/More about the event
The seminar series have been conceived in collaboration with Gunvor Guttorm, artist and Professor in duodji. Through the seminars Kiruna will be introduced from a Sámi perspective by inviting Sámi artists and thinkers to share their insights. These sessions will be valuable both as part of the Ways of Knowing (in Artistic Research) doctoral course at SKH and as stand-alone preparatory discussions for SAAR 2025 participants. In addition to the SAAR doctoral students and supervisors, all SKH doctoral students are invited to join.
Britta Marakatt-Labba in conversation with Maria Lind
4 April 2025, 10:00–12:00 CET
Britta Marakatt-Labba born in 1951 and raised in a reindeer-herding family in the Lainovuoma Sámi village, began her artistic career in 1979 after completing studies at the School of Design and Crafts in Gothenburg. In 1978, she helped establish the Masi Group and was involved in building a Sámi artists’ organization the following year. In the 1980s, she participated in the Alta protests, which she depicted in her well-known work The Crows (1981). Today, she lives and works in ÖvreSoppero and has been active as an artist for over 40 years. Her international breakthrough came in 2017 when her 24-meter-long embroidery Historjá (2003-2007) was exhibited at the prestigious contemporary art exhibition Documenta 14. Her life and artistry were portrayed in the film Historjá – Stitching for Sápmi (2022). Britta Marakatt-Labba has received several awards, including Illis Quorum (2017), the Stig Dagerman Prize (2019), and the Prince Eugen Medal (2020). In 2022, she participated in the main exhibition, The Milk of Dreams, at the Venice Biennale, and in 2024, the National Museum in Oslo presented her extensive retrospective, Sharp Stitches. The exhibition continued to the Kin Museum of Contemporary Art in Kiruna and will also be displayed at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, opening in June 2025.
Maria Lind is a curator, writer and educator from Stockholm. She is currently the director of Kin Museum of Contemporary Art, Kiruna. From 2020 to 2023 she was serving as the counsellor of culture at the embassy of Sweden, Moscow. She was the director of Stockholm’s Tenstakonsthall 2011-18, the artistic director of the 11th Gwangju Biennale, the director of the graduate program, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (2008-2010) and director of Iaspis in Stockholm (2005-2007). She has taught widely since the early 1990s, including as professor of artistic research at the Art Academy in Oslo 2015-18. Currently she is a lecturer at Konstfack’sCuratorLab. She has contributed widely to newspapers, magazines, catalogues and other publications. Among other things she has published Selected Maria Lind Writing (2010 Sternberg Press); Seven Years: The Rematerialization Art from 2011 to 2017 (2019 Sternberg Press) Konstringar: Vad görsamtidskonsten? (Natur & Kultur), as well as. Tensta Museum: Reports from New Sweden (2021) and The New Model(2020) (Tensta Konsthall& Sternberg Press.
Suggested reading:
Heather Igloliorte 2024 “Embroidering resistance” in Britta Marakatt-Labba, Saggon Mailmmit/Broderade Världar/Stitched Worlds.