Katarina Pirak Sikku

Katarina Pirak Sikku’s artistic explorations keep returning to her own, rich family history. By relating and highlighting individual lives and events, she manages to capture a multitude of micro-narratives that reflect both contemporary and historical structures within society.

For the biennial, Katarina Pirak Sikku has created an artwork specifically for Luleå konsthall that revolves around Sami crafts, or duodji, which have been present as a living tradition within her family. Pirak Sikku looks beyond the museological understanding of duodji to question the categories that produce sharp divisions between different people and forms of expression, and further influence how the past is interpreted and determines our understanding of contemporary practices. Through her explorations of her own family history, other perspectives related to practices, places, and the lives lived in them are brought to light. In the long term, this artistic research project is her way of constructing a living archive based on something other than predefined categories.

Katarina Pirak Sikku is an artist based in Jokkmokk. Pirak Sikku comes from a family in which art, such as duodji, has been an important part of life, and her practice also incorporates various forms of storytelling. Pirak Sikku studied at the Umeå Academy of Fine Art, and has also pursued academic studies in ethnology and the Lule Sámi language.