Visualizing Arctic Voices

This exhibition presents and invites dialogues with some forgotten or almost unknown stories from the Arctic from about 1750-1930. These stories are connected to paintings, drawings, photographs and illustrations that have been gathered or reproduced for this exhibition from museums, libraries and archives around the world. These images are of Indigenous peoples, cultures, landscapes and animals in Sápmi, Kalaallit Nunaat, Inuit Nunangat (northern Canada) and Alaska. They were created in a period of heightened colonial contact and pressure. During this time Nordic, European, American and Russian colonial governments and agents mapped, documented, missionized, settled, took land and resources, assimilated people and depleted animals. Created by both Indigenous individuals and colonial agents, what connects these images is that they originate in meetings between people from different cultures and with different agendas and understandings of relations to other human beings, animals and the natural-cultural environment. 

As described further in the catalogue, the exhibition examines the traces of Indigenous people’s biographies and material cultures that might be found in these images, as well as the individual and collective experiences of contact with agents of empire. How do these images show Indigenous knowledge, sovereignty, resistance and creative expression? What might they tell us about Indigenous and Western relations to Arctic animals and environments in this period? In line with the Riddu Riđđu Festival’s work of building pride and knowledge of Sámi and other Indigenous cultures, the exhibition addresses how these historical images may be taken back and potentially enrich Arctic Indigenous peoples’ histories and cultures today. The exhibition shows a selection of recent and contemporary works by Sámi artists Outi Pieski, Anders Sunna, Áillohaš/Nils Aslak Valkeapää (1943-2001), Aage Gaup (1943-2021) and Raisa Porsanger, Kalaallit artist Bolatta Silis-Høegh, and Sugpiat anthropologist and curator Dr Sven Haakanson. Their contributions to the exhibition invite conversations about repatriation, revitalisation and ways to decolonize history. 

Visualizing Arctic Voices is rooted in five years of archival work, workshops and collaboration between an international group of Indigenous and Western scholars and artists in the Arctic Voices Project (www.arcticvoices.space). The exhibition is a collaboration between the Arctic Voices Project, the Riddu Riđđu Festivála AS, the Center for Northern Peoples and RiddoDuottarMuseat, with further contributions by the Fridtjof Nansen Institute. The project has received funding from The Research Council of Norway, Nordic Culture Fund, Fritt Ord, Riddu Riđđu Festivála AS, NAPA – the Nordic Institute in Greenland and UiT The Arctic University of Norway's Equality and Diversity Committee.

Background image credits: Johan Turi. 'Lattilahti, Torneträsk'. 1933. Watercolour, crayon, pencil and stamps on paper, largest measure 41.8 x 48 cm. signed/inscribed in lower left with 'Johan Thuri Lattilahti / Torneträsk, 1933, 10 kr'. The Johan Turi Archives, Nordiska Museet, Stockholm (LA 659, No. 8, Box J1:1).