Arctic Highways

Resistance a theme in international circumpolar exhibition.

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In late September, Russia began drafting Sámi reindeer herders in Siberia to fight in its ongoing war with Ukraine, says Sámi artist Tomas Colbengtson. “Even though they are geographically far, I feel so close to them,” says Colbengtson, who is lobbying the Sámi Parliament in Sweden to offer sanctuary to these Siberian counterparts. “We have also been used in such a way, having our land, water and reindeer herds confiscated,” he says. “Now we are fighting to get our rights back.”

Colbengtson is one of 12 Indigenous artists from Norway, Sweden, Finland, Alaska and Canada with work in the internationally touring exhibition Arctic Highways, showing at the Yukon Arts Centre Gallery in Whitehorse until Nov. 12. “We have felt so powerless, except for our culture and art,” he says. “So we have decided to use our art.”

A walk through Arctic Highways feels a bit like joining an inspired resistance movement. The show was born from an ongoing residency for Indigenous artists in the Swedish village of Granö, where visiting circumpolar artists from as far away as Greenland and Japan soon realized they shared a similar story due to colonization. 

“Indigenous people in the Northern Hemisphere carry concealed wounds,” says Colbengtson. “And though art is created from individual perspectives, if you put it all together, it’s a unification story from the same collective history.” 

On one wall, it’s possible to make out the bold words on Colbengtson’s two shiny Plexiglas signs – “Black Life Matter” and “Sápmie” (the Sámi word for their unrecognized territory) – although both have been splattered with coloured paint. Defaced and Sápmie 2021 acknowledge the ongoing hostility toward empowered movements striving to reclaim lost identity, land and rights. Nearby, a hidden electric motor vibrates and periodically thumps under a hanging gold-embossed traditional shaman drum covered in sepia portraits of Sámi heroes, including poets, artists and linguists. It’s titled The children of the sun. 

“The Swedish government tried eradicating Sámi culture and religion,” says Colbengtson. Only a few Sámi shaman drums have survived, and the Pope has one of them. Colbengtson has heard the drums were originally used as a compass, although that knowledge is lost. By recreating the drum, he hopes to unearth some of this missing history.

Hanging from the ceiling across the room, a rope made of alternating bands of red velvet and harp sealskin drops into coils on the gallery floor. Seal in our blood pays homage to the lifeblood the seal hunt brings to Canadian Inuvialuk artist Maureen Gruben’s small Western Arctic community. Working with sealskin remains an integral part of Inuvialuk identity, much like reindeer hide for the Sámi. In Gunvor Guttorm’s installation Hiding, a pair of reindeer-hide high heels are perched atop a tangled fishing net holding well-worn Sámi nutukas, or curl-toed reindeer boots, contrasting traditional materials with modern fashion. 

Beside them stands Laila Susanna Kuhmunen’s haute couture gown When Two Become One, its sparkly braided train stretching almost five feet across the floor. The gown is made from the brightly coloured heavy wool traditionally used for Sámi kolts, or ancestral clothing. Though referencing craft, these works also make a pointed departure from it. “Craft can be a jail,” says Colbengtson, who started learning traditional Sámi knife-making as a child. Art pushes beyond craft, delving into politics and forcing culture to develop and grow, he says. “It’s a resistance practice.”

On one wall, like insect specimens stuck on pins, 35 little pouches not much bigger than a thumb are stitched from cotton topographical maps and decorated with bits of human hair, glass beads and colourful thread. In Credible, Small Secrets, Sonya Kelliher-Combs creates a pouch for each Alaskan village that has credible claims of abuse against Catholic priests ostensibly sent to save Indigenous children. The lengthy and chilling label names row upon row of the accused.

The vulnerability articulated in Kelliher-Combs’ tiny heart-wrenching memorial is echoed in Marja Helander’s huge glossy photos. In Waiting for the Morning, she stands naked by a lake with what looks like a bushy coyote tail tacked to her bum. Looming apocalyptic behind her, across the likely compromised water, is a massive open-pit mine. In The Secrets of Dusk, the Sámi artist’s naked body is covered in a smattering of downy white feathers, as she traipses through thigh-deep snow. The image is split. The other side depicts another open pit mine covered in a smattering of snow.

Sámi across Scandinavia and beyond – along with Indigenous people around the circumpolar North – are working to regain and reinvigorate their culture and religion, although many are still faced with the punishing task of protecting their traditional, but unrecognized, lands. 

Long, intricately embroidered works by Britta Marakatt-Labba illustrate two disparate worlds. In Resistance, herds of reindeer graze beside lakes and mountains alongside Sámi in traditional garb, while Hollowed Out portrays tiny bodiless human heads tumbling with minuscule reindeer into yawning open mine pits, the landscapes illustrated with bits of sheer fabric, lace and thread.

In her area of northern Sweden, Marakatt-Labba is seeing more and more traditional Sámi reindeer grazing land destroyed by expanding mines and development. “As Indigenous artists, we can shed light on what is happening in the Arctic today,” she says. In her works, Marakatt-Labba integrates Sámi mythology with contemporary struggles, embroidering mythical figures into her beautiful and simultaneously bleak mining panoramas. 

Arctic Highways doesn’t shy away from the harsh realities it illustrates. “Though even in the dark, you can see the light in this exhibit,” says Marakatt-Labba. “There is a lot of sadness, but as humans if you don’t have hope, it will end with us. So you have to be very hopeful.”

Arctic Highways opens next January at the Swedish American Museum in Chicago, before going to New York, Seattle and Minneapolis. ■

Arctic Highways at the Yukon Art Centre Gallery in Whitehorse from Sept. 9 to Nov. 12, 2022.

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