Sámi Ofelaš

For the first time Sámi artists will present their art and worldvies at the Biennale Arte in Venice, 2022, as a sovereign call representing Sápmi, (Sámi homeland that spans Scandinavia and the Kola Peninsula). The Sámi Pavilion is a Čatnosat (= connections, networks) project that revolves around three key elements: trans-generational relations, holistic Sámi knowledge, and learning and Sámi spiritual perspectives. This book serves as a project in its own right, to provide further reflections on Sámi art and knowledge, considering Sámi notions of non-linear time and the centrality of story-telling, sound and the spoken word. The core of Čatnosat features the artworks of The Sámi Pavillion's artists Pauliina Feodoroff, Máret Ánne Sara and Anders Sunna. Around this are two sections, neither beginnings nor ends. In one, we find an experimental short play and poems, as well as stories bringing political, and Sámi spiritual and philosophical perspectives. The other section includes a dialogue with the artists; an essay highlighting the centrality and span of Sámi knowledge creation across the ages, and a glossary of Sámi words pivotal to Sámi ways of being, doing, seeing and thinking, also highlighting the Sámi philosophical relationship to their language. The book is an exercise in Sámification that highlights the importance of Indigenous holidstic perspectives today, and that centres Sámi Indigenous wisdom in all fields of art and living. Following the Sámi custom of learning from elders of the community, the artists received guidance of the following Samí elders: Pauliina Feodoroff by Sámi educator and professor emerita Asta M. Balto; Máret Ánne Sara by reindeer herder and Sámi knowledge bearer Káren E. M. Utsi; and Anders Sunna by Sámi professor of law and juoigi (practitioner of joik, the Sámi musical practice) Ánde Somby.