Indigenous = Authentic

Indigenous Art at Biennale Arte 2022

Indigenous art took a significant place at Biennale Arte in Venice in 2022. It included artists who embraced their native cultures, from the Inuit people to nations of Chile, Zimbabwe, and Sámi people, to whom the entire Nordic pavilion in the Giardini was dedicated. Indigenous art is strongly connected to the place of its origin, rooted together with its people in the land and nature. It serves as a unique testimony of people’s life, history and traditions – exotic to the mainstream way of living of most of the Western world.

A total of 476 million Indigenous People in the world consist of 5 thousand different nations that speak more than 4000 languages. Indigenous People represent 5% of all inhabitants on Earth, and most of them – over 70% – live in Asia. Although the situation for them is improving over time, the claims made by Charles Gaines in his Indigenous Manifesto (1999) that preserving indigenous art and traditions is a constant fight are unfortunately still valid. Here he pointed out what cannot be changed as countless events that led to the eroding of cultures, loss of languages ​​and identity, the destruction of homes and the forced displacement of people. Gaines dogmatically criticises the world for seeing it as a place of white male supremacy and Western ruling compulsion. There is a hope this statement will soon be challenged, and people will realise how important it is to protect and preserve the extraordinary knowledge of these People. The knowledge can inspire how to deal with natural resources without abusing them and live in synchronicity with nature. Indigenous People safeguard 80% of the world’s biodiversity, and such places provide special conditions for life and the need to adapt to them. Indigenous art is the best tool to get an insight into the life of these unique and authentic cultures.

Shuvinai Ashoona brought to the main pavilion in Giardini surreal depictions of Inuit everyday life. She uses pencil crayons for her large pieces, quite an unusual technique for the formats but perfectly sustainable in relation to the weather conditions. Combining the beautiful, comprehensively detailed drawings and the enormous visual vocabulary of people, animals, nature, and otherwordly creatures create masterful compositions in Ashoona’s art. Her work combines the inner and outer world and her nation’s history, mythology and traditions. Shuvinai Ashoona is part of Kinngait Productions Studio, Canada’s oldest operating printing studio, with a great tradition of sharing the Inuit culture.

Portia Zvavahera represents the new generation of contemporary artists from Zimbabwe. In her work, she transforms the visions she experienced during sleep and by putting them on canvas, she relives and understands them. The large colourful paintings depict scenes with people and animals, more than often seeming as attending a ritual or being part of a spiritual event. These embodiments of Zvavahera’s world are a mix of many influences, as she put it: “My imagery is rooted in religious narratives from both the Old Testament and indigenous African religions infused with my understanding of how this plays itself out in Zimbabwe “. As a cherry on top, she uses special printing techniques over her paintings, giving the work beautiful ornaments and texture.

Awarded artist, poet and activist Cecilia Vicuňa have not found out about belonging to the Indigenous people of Chile until doing a DNA test recently. But even since she was little, her life was closely connected to nature and its protection. As an artist, her work is primarily site-specific and intuitive. In Venice, she presented one of her longtime ongoing projects of precarios. The precarious – testimonies connected to a specific region – poetically refer to its difficulties through many objects woven into them from the area. The NAUfraga precarios were made of objects found around Venice, and Vicuňa wanted to point out that the city is sinking and so get to the bigger global question of climate change. The two paintings on the wall in the same space are the artist’s early works from the 1970s. The People Eater, La Comegente, a surreal painting depicting a woman sitting on top of the city scenery eating small people floating to her mouth, is an allegory to Mother Earth fertilising the Earth. This original painting was done in 1971 but never found after Vicuňa wanted to retrieve it from a friend in Chile later; thus, she decided to repaint it again in 2019. The other canvas, Leoparda de Ojitos, shows the strength of nature and feminity, depicting the leopardess in a human pose, exposing her genitals and being covered in eyes all around her body, showing who is in charge in the forest. Cecilia Vicuňa is trying to raise awareness through her voice in the art world and bring people together to stand up for the environment. She is an active supporter of many organisations for Indigenous People and the environment worldwide, to name a few: Amazon Watch, Survival International, Kesan and Global Witness.

SÁMI

The Sámi People belong to the indigenous groups in Europe, with an approximate population of 100 000 people. They inhabit northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Their land is called Sápmi. They are politically represented by the Sámi Parliamentary Council consisting of 3 Sámi Parliaments, one from each country, except Russia. The central non-governmental institution is the Sámi Council. They have a higher education institution, the Sámi University of Applied Sciences in Kautokeino, with lectures primarily in the Sámi language. Their language is rich and deep in vocabulary to describe the natural world, proving the close connection to it and its understanding. The traditional and most common livelihood is reindeer herding, and it is connected to everything in Sámi culture, art, mythology, stories, families and way of life itself. The Sámi traditional clothing is called Ghakti, accompanied by typical shoes with curled-up toes as a part of the outfit according to which style it is possible to recognise to which Sámi tribe the people belong. A big part of Sámi culture is the art of joik, evoking someone or something in musical expression. Each joik song is dedicated to either person, animal, landscape or another natural power and portrays them. Joiking is similar to chanting, and because of its spiritual performance, it was banned during the Christianisation of the Scandinavian countries in the past. The joik was preserved and is now part of traditional and modern Sámi music. Another symbol of Sámi culture is the Sámi flag in primary colours, where the meaning of each symbolises the important part of the life of the Sámi people. The circle in the middle depicts the sun in red and the moon in blue, while the surrounding colours stand for the sun in the case of yellow, fire for red, green is nature, and blue is water. The important part in preserving the Sámi culture plays Daiddadallu, a unique Sámi artist collective based in Kautokeino, Norway, the capital of Sápmi. The Daiddadallu collective comprises about 21 artists who regularly organise exhibitions and events on Sámi art.

Britta Marakatt-Labba specialises in embroidery. In her work, we find depictions of the life of the Sámi people, captivating views of the Sápmi landscapes and scenes with herds of reindeer, either inspired by actual events from history or by a vision from her nation’s mythology. These stories situated on white fabric backgrounds are done beautifully to the smallest detail, as the artist herself calls them, painting with thread and needle. Britta Marakatt-Labba uses her work to point out important events, such as one from 1981, where she portrayed Norwegian police as crows arresting the protestors in the Alta Conflict. Another of her works points out the progressing climate change effect picturing a tragic event caused by thinning ice which broke and many reindeer died. Marakatt-Labba presented two new works at the biennale, circle embroideries Milky Way and In the Footsteps of the Stars. Both resemble views of the landscape enhanced by their round shape, one with the central motif of people’s heads under the stars and the second with beloved reindeer surrounded by sleeping people guarding the herd. Britta Marakatt-Labba was one of the founding members of the Máze Group. She is also entitled to duojár, the Sámi knowledge holder. It is a significant position reserved for those positively impacting and preserving Sámi culture.

Aage Gaup, a Sámi sculptor artist from Norway, was with Britta Marakatt-Labba, one of the eight founding members of the Máze Group, in 1978. The Máze Group served as the base for supporters of the Alta Conflict, the first Indigenous Peoples uprising in Europe. The Alta Conflict is known as a series of protests against constructing a hydroelectric power plant on the Alta River that went on until the early 1980s. The wooden sculpture presented at the biennale, Sculpture I & II (1979), is from this period and resembles a wave or a river surface. It floated in the air, while its power was enhanced by the expressive red in the background. Aage Gaup is famous for his work with wood and for set design for film and theatre. Until his last years, he was an active supporter of Indigenous People’s rights around the world. In 2016 he made a sculpture Forest Person with an aim to raise awareness about the living situation and hardships caused by the power of capitalism on people and their surroundings in the South American rainforest.

Nordic Pavilion

The whole Nordic Pavilion turned into the Sámi Pavilion for Biennale Arte in Venice in 2022, presenting works by Sámi artists Máret Ánne Sara, Pauliina Feodorof and Anders Sunna. Hanging sculptures of reindeer origin by Máret Ánne Sara were floating in space, and their main focus was on emotions and transformation connected to reindeer in Sámi culture. The sculptures Fear and Hope, made of reindeer sinuses, used the original smell of reindeer, which they produce when they experience these emotions. While fear smelled similar to pee, the hope was reminiscent of the maternal scent of reindeer when she had cubs. Subsequent was a three-storey spiral sculpture containing dead reindeer cubs in three levels covered in dry grass, typical material used in Sámi footwear as cold protection. This sculpture represents the cycle of life and death. Another piece, the reindeer’s hanged stomach, reminded us of a place where we all, like reindeer, process emotions. Máret Ánne Sara is an active member of the Daiddadallu Sámi art collective. The second artist, Pauliina Feodoroff, a Finish Sámi, presented a combination of a video and performance at the biennale. Two screens showed videos of Sápmi, travelling reindeer herds and people protecting their land against the threads of industrialisation. Pauliina Feodoroff is an active supporter of Sámi rights, and she is behind the organisation raising money against land violations with the motto: Don’t buy our land. Buy our art instead. The third artist of the Sámi Pavilion, Anders Sunna, told in his work the story of his family. He showed important events from the 50-year ongoing battle with government authorities on six large panels. Between them, piles of court cases documented violating the Sámi people’s rights throughout the years could have been read through QR codes. Sunna’s strong narrative combines personal with political. While the police officers wear uniforms that remind of the nazi ones as a symbol of evil, the family members protect their land and the reindeer. The last panel shows a dialogue from 2019 between the Swedish Government and the Sámi Parliament of Sweden, and they both agreed about reindeer earmarks on this one.