Press Release

The Finnish-Sami artist Outi Pieski has been acknowledged for her works that converse tenderly with Sami culture and identity. In paintings and large-scale installations, she explores themes of Sami history and future, indigenous people’s rights and sustainable development. Pieski’s works have close ties with Nordic nature, and she sees art as a tool for relating to, and recovering from, the forced assimilation of the Sami people.

 

 

International Archives 1st half of 2022

Lap-See Lam, Dreamers’Quay, Dreamers’Key

Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (Sweden)

09.02 - 03.04.2022

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Exhibition 09 February -03 April 2022. Bonniers Konsthall, Torsgatan 19 -113 90 Stockholm (Sweden). T +46 8 736 42 48.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In several of her works, Pieski references the Sami craft of duodji, with materials such as wood, silver, and textiles. Duodji was marginalised in the wake of colonisation, but the tradition still has a strong hold: “Duodji is a collective way of making. It is our connection to each other, to past and future generations, and to nature. For me, duodji is radical softness dealing with vulnerability, sincerity, sensibility and communality.”

The exhibition at Bonniers Konsthall is based on the traditional Sami horn headgear, ládjogahpir, which Pieski is relating to the history of Sami women. Her installations are often based on a collective practice involving collaborations with other artists, researchers, and activists. Paintings, photographs and graphic elements in the exhibition builds on an extensive study of the object, carried out by Outi Pieski and researcher Eeva-Kristiina Nylander. The story highlighted by the headgear involves a colonialist metamorphosis. The headgear was banned by the colonialists and forced to change its shape, a parallel to the forced transformation of society into a more patriarchal culture that reduced women’s status. Today, the ládjogahpir symbolises the fight for Sami women’s emancipation from colonial and patriarchal inequality.

Outi Pieski’s exhibition is a co-production by Bonniers Konsthall and the 13th Gwangju Biennale. With support from Frame Contemporary Art Finland.

Lap-See Lam, Phantom Banquet Ghost, 2019. Installation view, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, 2022. Photo: Oskar Omne

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