Britta Marakatt-Labba & Jan-Erik Lundström: Articulations

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Britta Marakatt-Labba, "Garjját / The Crows," 1981

wool embroidery on linen (courtesy the artist and the University of Tromsø, Norway)

Talk and Tour In-Person November 27, 3 - 4 pm Free With Admission

Articulations Art Lecture Series offers presentations from contemporary practicing artists and arts professionals. Local and international artists, curators, critics, art historians, theorists, and filmmakers share their practice and engage with the audience in open, critical discussion.

The SAAG is pleased to host an in-person talk and tour with Sámi artist Britta Marakatt-Labba and Swedish curator Jan-Erik Lundström. Together in conversation, Marakatt-Labba and Lundström will talk about her art practice and the development of their exhibition, Under the Vast Sky.

The tour will conclude with an Uaajeerneq, or a Greenlandic Mask Dance from visiting performer Elisabeth Heilmann Blind. The Mask dance is one of the oldest dramatical expressions among the Inuits of Greenland, approximately 4,000 years old.

Britta Marakatt-Labba (b 1951) is a North Sámi artist, living and working in Badje-Sohppar/Övre Soppero in Swedish Sápmi. Marakatt-Labba studied at the HDK Academy of Design and Crafts in Gothenburg, Sweden, but grounds her art equally in the duodji practices of Sámi crafts and art, learned through her upbringing. With embroidery as her principal medium, Marakatt-Labba works with textile art, collage, sculpture, and installations. In addition, she has also engaged in ecumenical clothing design, scenography, and book illustration. Britta Marakatt-Labba was a member of the influential and legendary Máze Joavku/Sámi Artist Group during its existence in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Marakatt-Labba exhibits internationally with recent projects in USA, Finland, Norway, and Nepal. Her art is collected by national and regional museums, such as Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, the North Norwegian Art Museum, as well as many additional public institutions and private collectors.

Jan-Erik Lundström is a curator, critic and historian of contemporary art and visual culture. He is the former director of the Sami Center of Contemporary Art, Kárášjohka, Norway, Bildmuseet, Umeå, and of Fotografiska museet, Stockholm, Sweden. He is the chairman of the Paletten Art journal and of Skogen Art Space, and the former chairman of the Centre for Photography in Stockholm.. Among his curatorial projects are Show Colour: Resist, Stand Up, Advocate, Fall Back Spring Forward, Surviving the Future, The Map: Critical Cartographies, Politics of Place, Carlos Capelán: Only You and Society Must Be Defended (1st Thessaloniki Biennial of Contemporary Art). He was the chief curator of Berlin Photography Festival and the artistic director of the 3rd Bucharest Biennale. He is the author and editor of many books, including Thinking Photography – Using Photography, Contemporary Sami Art and Design, Britta Marakatt-Labba: Embroidered Stories, Nordic Landscapes, Ursula Biemann: Mission Reports, and Irving Penn: Photographs, and he has published in journals such as Afterimage, Afterall, EIKON, European Photography, Glänta, Kunstpluss, and Tema Celeste. Lundström has contributed to major publications such as Horizons: Towards a Global Africa, The Oxford Companion to the Photograph and The History of European Photography of the 20th Century. Lundström has been a guest lecturer at, among others, Alvar Aalto University, Helsinki, Konstfackskolan and the Royal Art Academy, Stockholm, Malmö Art Academy, HISK, Antwerpen/Gent, Tarttu Art Academy, Estonia, Universidad de los Ándes, Bogotá, and Oslo Art Academy.