Anders Sunna

Anders Sunna is a Northern Sámi artist from a reindeer-herding family in Kieksiäisvaara, in the Swedish part of Sápmi.

Sunna’s politically charged artworks narrate the history of the violence and oppression against the Sámi people, specifically addressing his family’s five-decade-long struggle for their right and acknowledgement to be forest reindeer herders.

Anders Sunna (Sápmi, born 1985) Torne STYX, 2021, paint and collage on wood, 48 x 88 13/64 x 5/32 inches. Courtesy of the artist. © Anders Sunna. Photographs by Piera Niilá Stålka

Torne STYX, made for this exhibition, is situated in physical and mythological worlds. Torne is a river in northern Sweden and Finland, whereas Styx is the river in Greek mythology that separates the world of the living from the world of the dead. This mythological world is emphasized by its looming skeletal figure of Death, who surveys the land and whose gaze is affixed on a pocket watch. The artist collages historic Sápmi images, photocopies of forestry and mining, and his own family album onto the panel’s surface and then paints over them.

In 1971, the Sunna family lost their right to herd reindeer due to changes made in the law pertaining to reindeer herding. In turn, this led to a brutal relocation of the family, disagreements between Sámi villages, and a sense of legal disempowerment. The reindeer, the Sámi frock, the buildings, the machines, the balaclava, and the AK-47 all act as symbols of the artist and his family’s struggle.

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