Art and Truth-Telling

What counts as truth? In what ways can art expand the language of truth and the process of truth-telling? Art and Truth-Telling marks the process of the Truth Commission for the Sámi people on the Swedish side of Sábmie. Through vuöllie [joik], duöjjie [Sámi crafts], drawing, installation, architecture and glasswork, the exhibition highlights the role of art in shaping personal and collective truths.

Avant Joik (Matti Aikio, Katarina Barruk and Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje), Sissel M Bergh, Niklas Blindh, Monica L Edmondson, Mats Jonsson, Johanna Minde, Per Elof Nilsson Ricklund, Lisa Nyberg, Julia Rensberg, Birgitta Ricklund, Risfjells Sameslöjd (Doris Risfjell and Sven-Åke Risfjell) and Elme Ämting.

The exhibition Art and Truth-Telling is produced by Bildmuseet and Gaaltije Saemien Museume, and grounded in southern Sábmie. This is the first chapter of a year-long collaborative project. ]. Read more about the collaboration here. Ume Sámi, a critically endangered language from this region, is used in our translation of this text. Curators: Anneli Bäckman and Anca Rujoiu.

Sádniesvuahdah dájdán tjarra / Art and Truth-Telling

In November 2021, the Truth Commission for the Sámi people on the Swedish side of Sábmie was established, with the release of its report set for 1 October 2026. Truth Commissions hold the potential to produce new national narratives that acknowledge the harms of the past, contribute to healing, restore dignity and lay the groundwork for structural changes. They also play a crucial role in empowering affected communities by affirming their histories, voices and rights. 

Marking this historical moment, Bildmuseet initiated a year-long collaboration with Gaaltije Saemien Museume in Staare [Östersund], highlighting the role of art in the expression of personal and collective truths. The exhibition Art and Truth-Telling at Bildmuseet marks the first chapter of a cross-institutional project unfolding over the course of a year, until the release of the report, and is grounded in the southern regions of Sábmie. On 9 May 2026, the exhibition will open at Gaaltije Saemien Museume and runs until 17 October 2026. 

Weaving together sound, image and handwork with storytelling traditions, the exhibition shapes a living cosmos of Sámi experiences, where testimonies, dreams and resistance meet. From vuöllie [joik] and duöjjie [Sámi crafts] to drawing, installation, architecture and glasswork, these cultural practices give shape to multiple truths – as material, sonic and embodied expressions. The artworks speak to Professor Harald Gaski’s three key concepts that affirm the Sámi people’s continuous presence on this earth: giälla, duöjjie and vuöllie. Giälla refers to language – the capacity of sounds, words and visuals to communicate experience and convey knowledge. Duöjjie is both philosophy and practice, a bearer of Sámi knowledge expressed through the making of objects that unite the aesthetic with the functional. Vuöllie – the act of yoiking – is a musical form of communication that calls forth the presence of human and more-than-human life. 

The project supported the production of eleven new artworks by artists from different generations with connections to the South and Ume Sámi language areas. The themes that traverse the artworks are by no means a prescribed response to the Truth Commission. Rather, they speak to a continuum of engagement by the artists, an ongoing reckoning with histories that have shaped Sámi life and culture. While the works bear witness to cultural loss and the invisibility of Sámi presence in official narratives, they also evoke acts of resistance and resilience rooted in land and ancestry. Present-day exploitation and control of natural resources, echoing colonial dynamics, bring forth the question posed by Avant Joik in their work Can We Reconcile?

Integral to the project is the collaboration with Sámi cultural centres and associations, acknowledging the vital role they play in continuities of Sámi traditions and knowledge systems. They are also institutions important to efforts of self-determination, opening their doors to Sámi culture and sharing their knowledge with a wider public. The presentation of a selection of Sámi handicrafts and everyday objects from Risfjells Sameslöjd and Museum highlights the importance of Sámi self-organised museums as institutions that can tell Sámi history from their own perspectives and with their own methods.

While anchored at Bildmuseet and Gaaltije Saemien Museume, this project is multi-sited and evolving over the year. A series of activations, each grounded in the contexts of the participating artists, connect art and inquiries to the places that have shaped them. From a gathering in a local library exploring a possible Sámi name for Kramfors in the absence of a recorded one, to a visit and discussion in Vualtjere [Vilhelmina] about the work and future of Risfjells Sameslöjd and Museum, these gestures not only decentre the exhibition’s physical sites but emphasise the inseparability of place and implicated communities from the issues at stake.

Gaaltije Saemien Museume is a museum and a cultural centre rooted in the South Sámi region and located in Staare [Östersund]. The Gaaltije Foundation, established in 1984, has since 2022 embarked on a journey to develop a Sámi museum in close collaboration with the Sámi community. Bildmuseet has long engaged with Sámi culture and artists – curating landmark exhibitions such as Same, Same, but Different (2004), presenting the first major solo exhibitions of Britta Marakatt-Labba (2009) and Katarina Pirak Sikku (2014), and highlighting Sámi artists during the European Capital of Culture year in Ubmeje [Umeå] through eight solo exhibitions with new commissions.

There are approximately nine Sámi languages spoken across Sábmie, several of which are severely endangered. For the exhibition at Bildmuseet, the content is being translated into Ume Sámi, a critically endangered language spoken by around 60 individuals in the region. In the context of the Bildmuseet exhibition, terminology derived from Sámi art and knowledge, including the names of specific localities, has been consistently used in Ume Sámi. A few of the original work titles are written in other Sámi languages. We are grateful to Sophia Rehnfjell for her Ume Sámi translation efforts. At Gaaltije Saemien Museume, the content will be presented in South Sámi, spoken by an estimated 500–600 people across Sweden and Norway. These translations highlight the importance of grounding the artworks in their linguistic and cultural contexts. 

Artworks in the exhibition

Avant Joik 
(Matti Aikio, Katarina Barruk and Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje)
Can We Reconcile?, 2025

Installation of videos with sound
Performance 17 October

Avant Joik is a pan-Sámi and Nordic ensemble that explores an expressive and intuitive fusion of vuöllie [joik], avant-garde vocalisation, electronic music and visual experimentation. Their multisensory and improvisational approach is informed by the diverse backgrounds of its three members. 

The artists ask: Can we reconcile when Nordic colonialism never ended? Taking the form of a live performance and an installation within the exhibition, the commission Can We Reconcile? departs from the 1982 film Skierri – vaivaiskoivujen maa [Skierri: Land of the Dwarf Birches], directed by Markku Lehmuskallio. Skierri can be considered one of the earliest, if not the first, Sámi feature films. Although the director is Finnish, it is primarily a Sámi film production. The concept of the film came from Jouni S. Labba, a Sámi reindeer herder and political activist. Despite having no formal training or previous experience, Labba played a central role in the film, serving as head of production, co-writer of the script, and portraying the lead character. Filmed near the tri-border area of Finland, Sweden and Norway, Skierri merges documentary observation and field recordings with fictional narrative to portray the frictions between Indigenous livelihoods and colonial-state structures in Finland. In Can We Reconcile?, key themes from the film – still topical 43 years after its release – are remixed with the Avant Joik soundtrack.

Katarina Barruk, raised in Lusspie [Storuman] and Gajhrege [Gardfjäll], and currently based in Oslo, combines vuöllie with contemporary pop to revitalise the critically endangered Ume Sámi language through music. Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje, a composer from Trondheim, centres her practice on the voice as a musical instrument. Her work spans from avant-garde vocal techniques to compositions for orchestras, opera and political sound art. Matti Aikio, a Sámi artist and activist from Finnish Sábmie works across installation, video and performance. His interdisciplinary practice addresses Indigenous relationships with nature, land rights and the ecological consequences of colonialism.

Sissel M Bergh
Bissie baektie, 2025
[Sacred Small Mountain]

Film, 17 min

Tråanten voene, 2025
[River Drawings]

Ink on paper 

Vuerpie gyjht vuesehte, 2025
[Destiny Reveals Itself]

Elk skin, pewter and pearl embroidery

In her artistic practice, Sissel M Bergh gathers traces of Sámi culture, especially along the coast of Møre and Trøndelag in Norway, questioning the (in)visibility of Sámi presence in the official narratives of these regions. Through installations, films, paintings, drawings and collaborations, in recent years she has turned her focus toward the inner logic of the South Sámi language – as a tool to understand the surrounding landscape and to rewrite history.

In her new film Bissie baektie, we follow the layers of historical writing that for centuries have covered over and obscured the Sámi presence in the area of Sverresborg in south-west Tråante [Trondheim]. The film examines how Norway’s first historian, Gerhard Schøning, in the mid-18th century, shaped the story of Norway as the Germanic homeland. This colonial process gradually established the official image of the nation-state, but is here revealed through archival material, oral traditions and the voices of the land itself.

Tråanten voene, a series of new paintings in ink, depicts the fjordic landscapes of Tråante, where knowledge of the land, conveyed through language and stories, is set against the present-day exploitation and control of natural resources. The work is part of an ongoing project to make visible South Sámi culture, which has long been marginalised on official maps. 

Vuerpie gyjht vuesehte is part of a series of painted moose hides, bearing symbols of celestial forces of nature. The series connects to an exploration of the South Sámi word hovre for moose hide and its cosmological association with the sky.

Sissel M Bergh is a South Sámi Norwegian artist, researcher and filmmaker based in Tråante [Trondheim].

Niklas Blindh
Du tog hälften av mig, 2025
[You Took Half of Mine]

Acrylic on canvas 

Niklas Blindh’s paintings portray life with the reindeer as a living – yet threatened – cultural heritage, far from the romanticised image of the mountain landscape. The motifs reflect the vulnerability of both reindeer and humans in a contemporary context marked by climate crisis and exploitation, but they also embody a resilience rooted in the land and in Sámi culture.

In his large-scale painting, the artist divides the composition into two distinct parts, combining a range of painterly techniques, from expressive brushwork to graphic elements. Along the left edge, abstract motifs reference the cover of Elin Anna Labba’s book Herrarna satte oss hit. Om tvångsförflyttningarna i Sverige [English title: The Rocks Will Echo Our Sorrow. The Forced Displacement of the Northern Sámi]. This visual citation places the artist’s work in dialogue with other cultural efforts to make visible histories of dispossession, a theme echoed both in the painting’s imagery and its title.

Niklas Blindh is a reindeer herder and artist from Bïenjedaelie [Funäsdalen] who works across a range of media – from acrylic and watercolour to printmaking, sculpture and book illustration.

Monica L Edmondson
As Strong as Fragile, 2025 

Fused glass, metal frame

At the heart of Monica L Edmondson’s artistic practice lies glass – a material that serves both as messenger and metaphor; fragile and strong at the same time. In Edmondson’s work, the glass becomes a way of posing questions of identity, origin, belonging and migration.

As Strong as Fragile is a new work departing from a public artwork commission in Båargese [Borgafjäll] from 2013. Following the discovery of a Sámi drum, of which only the frame remains, hidden in a mire within the Voernese reindeer herding community, Edmondson transformed absence into a gesture of cultural continuity. Working with layers of fused glass, she recreated the drum in the same form as the original frame – but on a larger scale. Who hid the drum? When, and why?

Displayed in front of a window at Bildmuseet, the work interacts with light like stained glass, inscribing itself into the architecture and echoing traditions where both stained glass and Sámi drums served spiritual and storytelling roles.

Monica L Edmondson is a Swedish Sámi artist, born in Jiellevárre [Gällivare] with roots in the Lule Sámi area. Today she lives and works in Deärnná [Tärnaby], where she also has her glass studio.

Mats Jonsson
Vi som går efter, 2025
[We Who Come After]

Animation of ink drawings, 9 min

With his distinct storytelling style, bold ink lines, meticulous detail and personal narratives, Mats Jonsson weaves together myths, family memories and historical research in his drawings. His graphic novel När vi var samer [When We Were Sámi] traced 400 years of Forest Sámi history through a personal lens, marking a turning point in Jonsson’s autobiographical practice.

His new work begins with a session of the Truth Commission for the Sámi People that Jonsson attended in Árviesjávrrie [Arvidsjaur]. This experience becomes a point of departure for reflecting on the process of truth-telling from the perspective of a witness. What does it mean to bear witness? And for whom is this truth being told? Whose voices are privileged, and which stories are left out? 

The graphic story is presented as an animation, evocative of children’s book readings on Swedish television. The modesty of the medium – sparsely animated ink drawings paired with quiet narration – intensifies Jonsson’s personal mode of address. The work implicates the viewers as witnesses in the unfolding of memory, history and truth.

Mats Jonsson was born in Södertälje and lives in Sandslån.

Johanna Minde
Vuodjinsoabbi, 2025
[Driving Rod]

Wood and acrylic glass 

An architect and duajjáre [Sámi crafts practitioner], Johanna Minde explores relationships between spatial form and duöjjie [Sámi crafts]. Minde’s fluid practice, where traditional duöjjie meets architectural design, has enabled her to work across disciplines and in new contexts. Minde has previously collaborated on several public artworks with artist Katarina Spik Skum. 

Johanna Minde’s contribution to the exhibition reflects the multifaceted nature of her practice and educational background. She has designed a sculptural and functional structure that hosts a selection of objects created or collected by Doris and Sven-Åke Risfjell over the years in their museum in Vualtjere [Vilhelmina]. The structure serves as both an aesthetic form and a display device, engaging in a transgenerational dialogue with Risfjells’ duöjjie. 

The work draws inspiration from the Marsfjällsnåjden motif, a previously undocumented pattern rediscovered by Sven-Åke Risfjell on a South Sámi belt. Minde has translated the motif’s geometric language into a modular structure that resembles a traditional reindeer driving rod, a Vuodjinsoabbi in North Sámi. In the background, the Marsfjällsnåjden motif found on Risfjell’s textiles is painted on the wall. Rendered in white against a green backdrop, this enlarged pattern anchors the display of the Risfjells’ duöjjie within a Sámi visual language they celebrated over decades. In addition to her sculptural contribution, Minde collaborated closely with the curators and Bildmuseet’s installation team to conceptualise the exhibition’s spatial design. 

Johanna Minde is based in Luleju [Luleå] and Stockholm.

Per Elof Nilsson Ricklund
Tysta mönster, 2025
[Quiet Patterns] 

Ink on paper

Per Elof Nilsson Ricklund learned early on to seek truth and knowledge in the vast landscapes of his ancestors. Through his art, he aims to capture impressions of their lives, reveal hidden stories, give voice to the unspoken and weave his own perspectives into the broader Sámi history. In his paintings, he employs symbols as guides for life philosophies and as expressions of the human need to narrate and understand oneself. 

For this exhibition, Nilsson Ricklund has created two poster images, one for Bildmuseet and one for Gaaltije Saemien Museume. The images are emblematic of the artist’s process of sketching, characterised by an intimate scale, proximity between humans and landscape, and presence of Sámi symbols. In Tysta Mönster, distinct symbols lead us into the land, guided by a dream of reclaiming what has been lost and restoring what has been taken.

Per Elof Nilsson Ricklund has his roots in southern Sápmi and is today based in Orrestaare [Örnsköldsvik] and Los Angeles.

Lisa Nyberg 
Knyta an, entwine, gårredidh, 2025

Ink on paper, tapestry, yarn, wood, string, plastic, moss, lichen and roots

What does it mean to know a place? How does a place know you? Lisa Nyberg’s installation proposes a depiction of landscape, not as a fixed image, but as a site of affective, historical and material relationships. At its core are twenty-two drawings that carry the traces of the artist’s conversations with family and villagers in Mårtensliden, her mother’s homestead in South Sábmie. Soft shades of colours, annotations, sketches of objects and people record continuous patterns of migration and entangled histories that complicate one’s origin story within the context of settler colonialism.

The installation draws from geological mapping traditions, where land is understood through strata of time, movement and transformation. Domestic textiles – traditionally known as ranas in Swedish – collected by the artist form a five-metre tapestry, extending onto the floor. Yarn, moss, roots, plastic and lichen gathered from the site entwine with the drawings, unfolding and unravelling the landscape at the same time.

Lisa Nyberg is a visual artist, teacher and post-doc researcher at Umeå Academy of Fine Arts. She originates from the lands that accompany the length of the river Ångermanälven, and she also belongs to Malmö. 

Julia Rensberg
Dubpene gaskene, 2025
[Over There, In-Between]

Birch wood, woven textiles 

Otnerassh [the sturdy bow poles] form the framework of a gåhtie [Sámi hut] – the heart of the home, a place of warmth, safety, and community. They were clad with birch poles, then covered with waterproof bark and insulating turf. On the earthen floor lay fresh birch twigs and warming reindeer hides. In the centre of the gåhtie was the aernie [hearth], which kept the family gathered and warm.

This is how Julia Rensberg’s family lived in earlier generations. As late as the 1950s, the artist’s family was forcibly displaced from Fjällsjön to Brändåsen. At that time, Fjällsjön was accessible only by a horse trail, and although the Sámi had long wished for a proper road, the municipality deemed it unrealistic. It was considered cheaper and easier to relocate the 70 Sámi to a place with road access. When Swedes protested against the Sámi moving into their villages, they were forced instead to build a new settlement, Brändåsen – without sewage or electricity.

During this period, state representatives were present to ensure that the gåhtie were either dismantled or burned, so that no one could return. The plan was to expand hydropower in Fjäll-sjön.

In the in-between space that emerged after the relocation, remains all that could not be spoken. History is invisible, yet ever-present. Here dwell sorrow and longing, but also joy, hope, and dreams. The in-between knows no boundaries of time or place. Like the hearth, it carries the power to bring together the generations that came before with those yet to come. The dwelling, Dubpene gaskene, within the exhibition space evokes forms of remembrance and renewal in the aftermath of erasure. Family portraits and Sámi symbols are delicately carved into dry birch by the artist, inscribing memory into wood while hand-woven textiles and lassos adorn and honour the otnerassh.

Julia Rensberg is from the South Sámi village Ruvhten Sijte and grew up in Mora. Today, she lives and works outside Jåhkåmåhkke [Jokkmokk].

Birgitta Ricklund
Buerie båeteme, 2025
[Welcome] 

Birch wood panels mounted on plywood, birch branches

Mojhtesh, 2014
[Memories]

Birch, tanned reindeer hide, reindeer antler and reindeer leg skin

Birgitta Ricklund’s portal welcomes visitors into the exhibition. Inspired by the curved poles of a gåhtie [Sámi hut], the heart of the home, it forms a threshold between worlds. Through twelve carved images in birch wood, a story unfolds of everyday and crafted objects together with patterns weaving a worldview rooted in South Sámi culture. A coffee pot, a carved guksie [cup] and the Malja, a protective amulet bearing the emblem of the Virgin Mary or a symbol of the Sámi protective spirit Sáráhkká, who cared for and safeguarded the home and family.

Childhood memories of reindeer slaughter and her grandparents’ craft of making reindeer skin and bällingskor [Sámi reindeer fur shoes] early on sparked Ricklund’s interest in duöjjie [Sámi crafts]. She carried this tradition into furniture-making, where she has worked with 18th-century replicas, restorations and commissioned pieces, as well as decorations for churches and public spaces. In her practice, she combines the Sámi design language with the traditions of cabinetmaking – from simple birch planks to richly decorated objects with carving and wood sculpture.

Birgitta Ricklund was born and raised in Saadteskenjuana [Saxnäs], Maaresvaerie [Marsfjäll], in the South Sámi area. Today, she lives and runs her woodworking studio just outside Orrestaare [Örnsköldsvik].

Risfjells Sameslöjd
(Doris Risfjell and Sven-Åke Risfjell)

Selection from the museum collection and their own handicraft

In the heart of Vualtjere [Vilhelmina], Doris and Sven-Åke Risfjell run a Sámi handicraft shop and a small museum, where they open the doors to Sámi culture and share their knowledge with a wide audience. Their studio and workshop are located at their home, Risfjellsgården, by Lake Malgomaj. Here, they find inspiration in their ancestral heritage for their duöjjie [Sámi crafts], which connects South Sámi traditions with new artistic expressions.

Over the years, Doris and Sven-Åke Risfjell have collected Sámi handicrafts and everyday objects that carry memories and stories, reflecting the creative diversity of the South Sámi cultural heritage. Today, the collection has grown into a small yet significant museum within their shop, showcasing Sámi craft traditions and stories from the region. Sámi and settler cultures meet in a simply carved milk stool, while a worn reindeer-skin schoolbag carries memories of the colonial school system imposed on the Sámi by the Swedish state.

As a way of highlighting the importance of Sámi museums – institutions that can tell Sámi history from their own perspectives and with their own methods – the exhibition Art and Truth-Telling presents a selection from the collection. The question of who holds the right to interpret and represent Sámi cultural heritage is central, and here museums can play a crucial role: not only as repositories, but as active spaces for know-ledge, storytelling and resistance. The selection is shown in a designed installation, carefully conceptualised, adapted and shaped by the architect and duajjáre [Sámi crafts practitioner] Johanna Minde. In the background, an ancient noaidi pattern from Marsfjällen emerges – a unique motif that Sven-Åke Risfjell has come across and revived in his craft practice.

Doris Risfjell and Sven-Åke Risfjell from Vualtjere [Vilhelmina] have worked as craft artists for many years and share a strong commitment to the South Sámi craft tradition.

Elme Ämting
Sjeltie 1725, 2025
[Åsele 1725]

Drums, wood, photographs transferred on reindeer skin, brass, synthetic sinew thread 

Twenty-six drums bear witness to the violence directed against Sámi culture. Each drum has been meticulously crafted by the artist using stretched reindeer hide over the bent wooden frame. On their surfaces, personal as well as archival materials are imprinted; primarily documents referencing the confiscation of twenty-six Sámi drums in Sjeltie [Åsele] in 1725. This event marked the largest known seizure of drums during the Christianisation of the Sámi people in the 17th and 18th centuries. 

Many of these confiscated drums entered museum collections, illustrating the paradox between acts of destruction and efforts of preservation. The drum membrane, which traditionally bore figures and symbols painted with alder-bark ink, serves as a repository of cultural loss and resistance. Each drum is a fragment of memory, part of an assembly of voices; one has to look at and listen to each one and to all at once. 

Elme Ämting, born in Ubmeje [Umeå] and based in Kramfors, works across sculpture, installation, sound and performance, connecting personal experiences of cultural loss and mental illness with historical suffering and acts of resistance.