Katarina Pirak Sikku

During the darkest months of the year, Katarina Pirak Sikku promenades through the fells and forests west of Jokkmokk. She takes in the dark landscape, and looks for colours in the dimness as she walks over ice and marshes. Her wanderings through woods and frozen waters prevail also in the drawings she makes back at her studio, savouring the feeling of the landscape in her mind, still surrounded by darkness. This process is intuitive; a creative force dedicated the personal and non-discursive. For she never looks at the landscape naively, but always as a parallel to her many years of investigation into the race-biological studies of Sami people during the first half of the 20th century. Working with interviews, and archival material from the Institute of Race Biology, Pirak delegitimises its research by connecting it to her own cultural history as a Sami. Guorosvuođa ája (Spring of Emptiness) and Sjävnjásj (While the Darkness Last) are related to what Pirak Sikku calls “different kinds of ice-experiences,” meaning to “carefully test the boundaries of where you can set foot without soliciting cracks. The history of race biology is full of such cracks and you must step cautiously, or you can get terribly hurt.” Nature is presented as an archive of memories that are at once beautiful, painful and mute.

Katarina Pirak Sikku (b. 1965) is an artist based in Jokkmokk.

Work

Tomhetens källa (Guorosvuođa ája), 2014

Location

Luleå konsthall
17.11.2018–17.2.2018

Work

Sjävnjásj (Medan mörkret varar), 2014

Location

Luleå konsthall
17.11.2018–17.2.2019