Anders Sunna: The Drumbeat of Noaidi
Larkin Durey is delighted to present an exhibition of new work by Anders Sunna. This is the artist’s first solo show in the UK.
“When you grow up with a conflict and are in the middle of it, it becomes your life and everyday life. The abnormal simply becomes something normal.”
Anders Sunna is a member of the indigenous Sámi peoples who inhabit the region of Sápmi, which today encompasses large northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula, Russia.
Sunna’s work chronicles the ongoing persecution of the Sámi people by the Swedish authorities and his family’s struggle for the right to practice reindeer husbandry following the Swedish Government’s introduction of the 1971 Reindeer Act. Subsequently declared illegal but written into the constitution, this Act forced the Sámi people to adhere to state regulations regarding reindeer herding and culling and to herd reindeer on behalf of Swedish property owners without compensation. Sunna’s family immediately resisted this affront to their cultural heritage and the substantial financial fallout, igniting a conflict with the authorities and other Sámi that continues to this day. In a double betrayal, Sunna and many other Sámi fighting for justice feel the Sámi Parliament – politically subordinate to the Swedish state – has done little to protect them.
For Sunna, art is integral to Sámi life, a universal language he uses as a “weapon in the political struggle” and a powerful agent for change. “Art has played a very important role in our family’s survival”. Considered a forerunner of the new wave of politically engaged Sámi artists, Sunna paints brutal scenes of colonial violence: land theft, police harassment and environmental destruction, forcing the perpetrators in faraway offices into the public eye. Everywhere there are ghosts, the picture plane invaded by shadows and skeletons, the land infused with menace and grief. Some paintings appear apocalyptic, with Swedish and Norrbotten politicians depicted in military uniform, others invoke Sámi deities or the noaidi, a powerful shaman and protector of the Sámi people. The reindeer – and the Sámi resistance – remain central. As Sunna writes, the works are “a picture of the present and how children are influenced by adults and politicians' decisions. How can you forget the next generations?”
Anders Sunna was born in Kieksiäisvaara, Sápmi in 1985. He lives and works in Jokkmokk, Sápmi, Sweden. Sunna was one of three artists included in The Sámi Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2022.The resulting work Illegal Spirits of Sápmi was subsequently acquired for the Moderna Museet, Stockholm’s permanent collection.
