Matti Aikio

How Sámi finished?

Matti Aikio’s sound installation tells about the present-day situation of the Sámi people in Finland. It turns upside down the Sámi storytelling tradition by presenting a story of the future.

Matti Aikio: How Sámi finished?. 2016. Environmental Art Park Ii. Photo: Antti J.Leinonen.

It is hard to see historical changes as they unfold. It is only as time passes that changes become clear, and we realise the significance of certain events. We need some distance to see the turning points in history. In this piece, Aikio goes through the history of the Sámi people and uses nuances of absurdity when referring to the present situation as the non-Sámi in northern Finland suddenly want to become Sámi. His work has an intriguing ambivalence, combining poetic storytelling with cold, hard political facts. Even the trees in the park might be more willing than we to listen to Aikio’s story, flowing gently into the air from megaphones.

Matti Aikio (b. 1980) comes from Vuotso, a small reindeer-herding Sámi village in northern Finland. He earned a bachelor of arts from Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art in 2012. Aikio is a visual artist who works with photography and video, as well as with sculptural installations, sound art and music. He has also been a DJ since 2009. Aikio is interested in the concept of nomadism as a philosophy, culture and lifestyle. Along with his artistic practice, he is involved in nomadic reindeer herding, which his family has practiced for centuries.

Gallery

See also

Outi Pieski

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Ingunn Utsi

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Joar Nango

Joar Nango’s piece represents a different approach to the framework of an environmental-art biennale as it is process based and investigates the tradition of burning tar. At the biennale, traces and documentation of the process, conducted during the preparative workshop in June, can be seen.

Jenni Laiti

Forewalkers is based on the Sámi philosophy of the agreeable life (soabala eallin): preserving, protecting and supporting diversity in both nature and humans. Jenni Laiti and Outi Pieski have made their own borderless fence from walking sticks. In Sápmi, walking sticks traditionally have been used to mark reindeer calves in the bare mountains. Thus, this artwork references praxis which decolonises Sámis’ land by defining its borders. This piece also pays homage to the Sámi ancestors, who wandered before the artists and are their forewalkers. Their legacy is alive in Sámi culture today.

Carola Grahn

Carola Grahn’s contribution to the Ii biennale is a series consisting of three wood signs with hand-carved sentences positioned in relation to the landscape. The blunt sentences bring to mind human relations.

Aage Gaup

In the front of the park, a structure rises from the ground. The contours of a person can be seen in the forest, almost guarding the site. Aage Gaup’s piece is made from the trunks of pine trees, carved into a sculpture. From the material, he awakens vuovdeolmmo.

Tomas Colbengtson

Tomas Colbengtson’s pieces for this biennale are two silkscreen portraits of Sámi people printed on polycarbonate glass. The portraits are placed in nature, with a river as their backdrop. We can see the faces of two women, visualized through patterns taken from old carvings on reindeer antlers. The river passes behind their faces, symbolising the years that have passed and the culture that has vanished.