SAAR is a joint Nordic project supporting doctoral artistic research practice facilitated by partner countries Finland, Sweden and Norway. It provides a stimulating intellectual environment and a supportive setting where doctoral artist-researchers from all fields collaborate, present their ongoing artistic research, and receive feedback from peers and tutors from the partner network.
We warmly invite you to participate in Deep Reading with Sápmi, an online seminar series hosted by Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH) in preparation for SAAR 2025. The Summer Academy will take place in Kiruna (Northern Sámi: Giron; Finnish: Kiiruna; Meänkieli: Kieruna), Sápmi in collaboration with KIN Museum of Contemporary Art/Maria Lind. The four online sessions offer an opportunity to engage with Sámi perspectives on knowledge, place, and artistic practice before we gather in August.
Why Deep Reading with Sápmi?
Kiruna is a site where multiple knowledge systems, traditions, and cultures intersect, shaped by diverse temporal and spatial dimensions.
It is home to Sámi communities whose histories and traditions have been deeply rooted in the land for generations, as well as Tornedalians and other minority groups whose identities have been influenced by shifting borders, state policies, and economic changes. Kiruna also hosts a Swedish-majority population that settled in the area following the establishment of iron ore mining in the early 1900s.
Kiruna has one of the world’s largest iron ore mines, continuously reshaping both its physical and social landscape. Additionally, it is a major hub for space research, extending its gaze beyond earthly boundaries.
Often regarded as a vast and sparsely populated testing ground, the region is marked by a deep interconnection between resource extraction, the military, and scientific exploration. These overlapping—and at times conflicting—perspectives make Kiruna a uniquely contested space, where extractive industries, Indigenous and minority rights, and scientific inquiry converge.
As we approach SAAR 2025, we recognize the importance of preparing ourselves thoughtfully—acknowledging the histories, communities, and landscapes we will engage with. Deep Reading with Sápmi is designed as a space for learning, listening, and reflecting.
The seminar series have been conceived in collaboration with Gunvor Guttorm, artist and Professor in duodji. Through the seminars Kiruna will be introduced from a Sámi perspective by inviting Sámi artists and thinkers to share their insights. These sessions will be valuable both as part of the Ways of Knowing (in Artistic Research) doctoral course at SKH and as stand-alone preparatory discussions for SAAR 2025 participants. In addition to the SAAR doctoral students and supervisors, all SKH doctoral students are invited to join.
Seminar Program
7 March 2025, 10:00–12:00 CET
Duddjon and its research, with Gunvor Guttorm.
4 April 2025, 10:00–12:00 CET
A Conversation with Britta Marakatt-Labba and Maria Lind
9 May 2025, 10:00–12:00 CET
Carving time with Åsa Simma (artistic director for Giron Sámi Teáhter)
5 June 2025, 13:00–15:00 CET
Title TBA, with Liisa-Rávná Finbog (Sámi scholar, duojár, writer, curator and editor)
See more information below.
Practical Information
- The seminars will take place online.
- Seminars are open to all doctoral students at SKH and SAAR 2025 participants.
- Sessions will consist of a guest presentation, followed by collective discussion and reflection.
- Please sign up for each seminar via the booking links below.
- Please consult the resources (texts, artwork, videos) shared by our guests available under Resources.
We encourage you to join these conversations, whether you are participating in SAAR or simply interested in exploring artistic research in relation to Sámi perspectives. Your presence and engagement will contribute to a deeper, more considered exchange when we meet in Kiruna.
We look forward to reading, thinking, and discussing together.
All our best,
Petra Bauer, Professor in Film&Media for the profile area Art, Technology and Materiality
Hanna Husberg, Assistant Professor in Performative and Media-based Practices, Third-Cycle Education Coordinator
Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH)
Duddjon and its research
7 March 2025, 10:00–12:00
Guest: Gunvor Guttorm
Gunvor Guttorm is a distinguished Sámi artist and scholar specializing in *duodji*—Sámi arts and crafts, traditional art, and applied art. She serves as a professor at the Sámi University of Applied Sciences in Guovdageaidnu/Kautokeino, Norway, where she was also rector from 2015 to 2019. Recent years she has worked with projects like AIDA (Arctic Indigenous Design Archives), where the focus was research through duddjon (making). The last two years she has worked with Maori women about baby vessels. Her research focuses on cultural expressions within Sámi and Indigenous societies, emphasizing the contemporary context of duodji.
Suggested readings: Go to Resources
Britta Marakatt-Labba in conversation with Maria Lind
4 April 2025, 10:00–12:00
Guest: Britta Marakatt-Labba in conversation with Maria Lind
Britta Marakatt-Labba born in 1951 and raised in a reindeer-herding family in the Lainovuoma Sámi village, began her artistic career in 1979 after completing studies at the School of Design and Crafts in Gothenburg. In 1978, she helped establish the Masi Group and was involved in building a Sámi artists’ organization the following year. In the 1980s, she participated in the Alta protests, which she depicted in her well-known work The Crows (1981). Today, she lives and works in ÖvreSoppero and has been active as an artist for over 40 years. Her international breakthrough came in 2017 when her 24-meter-long embroidery Historjá (2003-2007) was exhibited at the prestigious contemporary art exhibition Documenta 14. Her life and artistry were portrayed in the film Historjá – Stitching for Sápmi (2022). Britta Marakatt-Labba has received several awards, including Illis Quorum (2017), the Stig Dagerman Prize (2019), and the Prince Eugen Medal (2020). In 2022, she participated in the main exhibition, The Milk of Dreams, at the Venice Biennale, and in 2024, the National Museum in Oslo presented her extensive retrospective, Sharp Stitches. The exhibition continued to the Kin Museum of Contemporary Art in Kiruna and will also be displayed at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, opening in June 2025.
Maria Lind is a curator, writer and educator from Stockholm. She is currently the director of Kin Museum of Contemporary Art, Kiruna. From 2020 to 2023 she was serving as the counsellor of culture at the embassy of Sweden, Moscow. She was the director of Stockholm’s Tenstakonsthall 2011-18, the artistic director of the 11th Gwangju Biennale, the director of the graduate program, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (2008-2010) and director of Iaspis in Stockholm (2005-2007). She has taught widely since the early 1990s, including as professor of artistic research at the Art Academy in Oslo 2015-18. Currently she is a lecturer at Konstfack’sCuratorLab. She has contributed widely to newspapers, magazines, catalogues and other publications. Among other things she has published Selected Maria Lind Writing (2010 Sternberg Press); Seven Years: The Rematerialization Art from 2011 to 2017 (2019 Sternberg Press) Konstringar: Vad görsamtidskonsten? (Natur & Kultur), as well as. Tensta Museum: Reports from New Sweden (2021) and The New Model(2020) (Tensta Konsthall& Sternberg Press.
Suggested readings: Go to Resources
Carving time with Åsa Simma
9 May 2025, 10:00–12:00
Guest: Åsa Simma
Åsa Simma, Director, Actor, Yoiker and Scriptwriter, CEO of Giron Sámi Teáhter. Simma was born into a nomadic reindeer herding family, migrating between north Sweden and Norway depending on the season. She was taught the traditional Sami singing called “yoik”, during the time when yoiks were forbidden. She was part of the movement to diminish the yoiking ban. She left for Denmark where she took an actor’s education. Simma has been very active in the global indigenous peoples’ movements. She has toured among Australian Aboriginals and lived with Inuits from Greeenland and North American Indians. She has worked as a film dramaturgist and script developer at the International Sami Film Institute. Presently she is the CEO of the Sami Theatre.
Suggested reading may be added after the seminar.
Title (TBA)
5 June 2025, 13:00–15:00
Guest: Liisa-RávnáFinbog
Register here (link will be avalaible soon)
Liisa-RávnáFinbog is a Sámi Indigenous scholar, duojár, and curator from Oslo, Vaapste, and Skánit in the Norwegian part of Sápmi. She is currently based in Tampere, on the Finnish side of Sápmi, where she is doing post-doc research in connection with “Mediated Arctic Geographies,” a project that aims to look at how Arctic geospheres are aesthetically shaped and mediated to become vehicles of environmental, [geo]political, and social concerns at Tampere University. Her specific focus is on the relationship between Indigenous aesthetics in the Arctic and the land. Her written works include contributions to collective works such as Research Journeys In/To Multiple Ways of Knowing (2019), articles in Nordic Museology (2015), and in the digital platform Action Stories (2021); essays in multiple exhibition catalogues (2022, 2023); as well as several upcoming works, including her first book, It Speaks to You—Making Kin Through People, Stories, and Duodji in Sámi Museums (2023).
