Overline: RIFS Tuesday Talk

Headline: Sámi Artivism: Questioning Arctic Iconographies

Sámi Artivism: Questioning Arctic Iconographies - Dr Anne Hemkendreis

Visibility matters, especially in times of (environmental) crises. However, the iconography of the Arctic is deeply rooted in heroic narratives and sublime aesthetics. By searching for new ways to express the ongoing colonial attitudes of economical megaprojects and their disastrous effects, artists struggle to express the need for a fundamental change of human-nature-relationships without repeating hidden power-structures within visual cultures of the Arctic. My presentation focusses on Sámi artivism as an engaged artform that is involved in current political and social debates while simultaneously avoiding simplistic messages and solutions. Instead, it opens up spaces of reflection that invite to question the concepts of humanism, the imagination of Arctic wilderness, and romanticizing tendencies in the perception of Sámi culture. As this presentation will show, Sámi artivism challenges ideas of dualism – between nature and culture, humans and animals, or the physical and the spiritual – and marks them as constructs of colonial pasts that haunt the present. Sámi artivism invites intimate encounters with viewers’ own imaginaries of a pristine North while simultaneously drawing attention to the presence of that which is non-human. Through this, Sámi contemporary art sensitizes its viewers to the important question of who needs to be considered when talking about environmental justice.

Dr. Anne Hemkendreis works as a research associate at the SFB 948 "Heroes - Heroisations - Heroismen" at the Albert Ludwig University in Freiburg. She is an Associate Senior Lecturer at the Humanities Research Centre of the Australian National University in Canberra and a member of the Junge Akademie (of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences). Previously, she worked as a Fellow at the Alfried Krupp Institute for Advanced Studies in Greifswald and as a research assistant at Leuphana University Lüneburg. She has taught at various universities, including the University of the Arts in Berlin, and performed as an artist in the field of physical theatre and aerial artistry. In her current research project, Anne investigates artistic positions on heroisations within the history of perception of the Arctic and their relevance to ecological crises, the relevance of indigenous knowledge and non-human life.

The Tuesday Talk is by invitation only.