ARTWORK TO DENOUNCE COLONIALISM

Máret’s artistic project, baptized Pile o’Sápmi is a reference to the 19th century massacre of buffalo in North America by colonists. But it also echos the rites and traditions of her people with a narrative discourse that evolves like a “work in progress”. The installation was made up of hundreds of recently killed animal heads. The flesh, hair, eyes, odor of decay: each element had a place. Then time did its work and only the skulls remained. A hole in each forehead bares witness to the animals having been killed by a bullet, totally disregarding the indigenous killing process that preserves and uses each part of the animal.

A necklace of reindeer jawbones also evokes these objects that were collected by Europeans during the 19th century. Máret’s work questions colonialism in the past, present and future while paying homage to the ancestral lifestyle of the Samis such as this piece entitled “Lasso.” This fetish object of breeders is today the symbol of combat against the disappearance of an entire people. “Don’t take a bomb, take your lasso.”

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AN ARTIST AND DAUGHTER OF REINDEER BREEDERS 

Born on December 23, 1983, Máret Ánne Sara grew up in a family of breeders in the Sami territories of Norway. Her father stopped his breeding activity when she was twenty years old. This decision inspired her work as a journalist and artist doing numerous reports about indigenous peoples around the world. Working in Kautokeino where she co-founded the Dáiddadállu artist collective, she has developed, in parallel, a practice that combines drawings, painting and writing. Her work takes inspiration from her ancestors and culture to the point that she devoted herself all out to defending breeders when her younger brother, also a breeder, was required by the government to kill three-quarters of his herd in 2013. At this point she became a militant artist. On Instagram, she posted a photo of a flowered coffin with the comment “We defend a lifestyle, a culture …”.

Above the Arctic Circle in Norway, Sweden, Finland and on Russia’s Kola peninsula live 110,000 Samis, united by a language and history that dates back over ten thousand years. The passionate people who live on these wild, vast, hostile lands are hunters, fishers, gatherers and breeders of migratory reindeer. Their ancestors had an animist vision of the world. They believed that this extreme nature possessed a soul and that the mountains, rocks and lakes could help those who prayed to them. But over the centuries, the imposition of religion and colonization plus the extracting of natural resources transformed their lifestyle. The Far North has been increasingly threatened by the voracious mining industry. Projects have multiplied, especially in Norway where the damage is already visible. Since 2007, a law adopted by Norway’s parliament required reindeer breeders to kill a percentage of their herds in the name of a sustainable ecosystem. Today, only 10% of the Samis are still breeders. They are the last natural souls to live like their ancestors. The whole Sami community supports them since they represent the survival of an entire people and culture.