During the last five decades we have witnessed an increase in activity among artists identifying themselves as Sami, the only recognised indigenous people of Scandinavia. At the same time, art and duodji (traditional Sami art and craft) have been organized and institutionalized, not least by the Sami artists themselves. Sami Art and Aesthetics discusses and highlights these developments and places them in historical and contemporary contexts for an international audience. At stake are complex, changing terms regarding the creative and the political agencies. The question is not how indigeneity, identity, people, art, duodji, and aesthetics correspond to conventional Western ideas, rather it is how they interact with the Sami and their neighbouring cultures and societies. The volume is written by some of the foremost art historians and literary scholars in Sami art, craft, architecture, culture, and indigenous studies. Artists presented include Johan Turi, Ivar Jaks, Outi Pieski, Folke Fjellstrom, Katarina Pirak Sikku, Geir Tore Holm, and Silje Figenschou Thoresen.

Forside -- Titleside -- Colophon -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- Unstable Categories of Art and People (Svein Aamold) -- Representations: Colonialism and the Struggle for Indigenous Self-definition -- Hybrid Iconoclasm: Three Ways of Picturing the Sámi as the Other (Rognald Heiseldal Bergesen) -- Art History in the Contact Zone: Hans Zakæus's First Communication, 1818 (Ingeborg Høvik) -- Representing the Hidden and the Perceptible: Johan Turi's Images of Sápmi (Svein Aamold) -- Traditional Sámi Culture and the Colonial Past as the Basis for Sámi Contemporary Art (Tuija Hautala-Hirvioja) -- The Sculpture of Iver Jåks and the Question of Sámi Aesthetics (Irene Snarby) -- Critical Terms: Duodji, Contexts, and Ethnographic Objects -- Decolonial or Creolized Commons? Sámi Duodji in the Expanded Field (Charlotte Bydler) -- The Power of Natural Materials and Environments in Contemporary Duodji (Gunvor Guttorm) -- Indigenous Aesthetics: Add Context to Context (Harald Gaski) -- Strange Objects: Ethnographic Objects in Between Self-Presentation and Contextualisation (Christian Spies) -- Negotiations: Contemporary, Indigenous Art and Architecture of the North -- Strategies of Monumentality in Contemporary Sámi Architecture (Elin Haugdal) -- Travelogue: Karukinka-Kangirsuk Still Images From Video (Geir Tore Holm) -- Performing the Forgotten: Body, Territory, and Authenticity in Contemporary Sámi Art (Ulla Angkjær Jørgensen) -- Blubber Poetics: Emotional Economies and Post-Postcolonial Identities in Contemporary Greenlandic Literature and Art (Kirsten Thisted) -- Contemporary Sámi Art in the Making of Sámi Art History: The Work of Geir Tore Holm, Outi Pieski and Lena Stenberg (Monica Grini) -- Afterword -- The Modern and the Modernist in Twentieth-Century Indigenous Arts (Ruth B. Phillips) -- Index of names and places -- Index of subjects

It has often been argued that the arrival of the early-20th-century avant-gardes and modernisms coincided with an in-depth exploration of the materiality of art and writing. The European historical avant-gardes and modernisms excelled in their attempts to establish the specificity of media and art forms as well as in experimenting with the hybridity of the materials of their multiple disciplines. This third volume of the series European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies sheds light on the full range and import of this aspect in avant-garde and modernist aesthetics across all art forms and throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The book’s contributions, written by experts from some 20 countries, seek to answer the following questions: What sort of objects and material, works and media help us to properly grasp the avant-garde and modernist “aesthetics of matter”? How were affects, emotions and sensory and bodily experiences transferred and transformed in the experiment with matter? How were “immaterial” things such as concepts of time changed in this aesthetic moment? What “material meanings” were disseminated in the cultural transfer and translation of objects? How did subsequent avant-gardes deal with the “aesthetics of matter” in their response to historical predecessors?

This book examines the interconnections between art, phenomenology, and cognitive studies. Contributors question the binary oppositions generally drawn between visuality and agency, sensing and thinking, phenomenal art and politics, phenomenology and structuralism, and subjective involvement and social belonging. Instead, they foreground the many ways that artists ask us to consider how we sense, think, and act in relation to a work of art.

While the occupation of Iraq and its aftermath has received media and political attention, we know very little about the everyday lives of Iraqis. Iraqi men, women, and children are not merely passive victims of violence, vulnerable recipients of repressive regimes, or bystanders of their country’s destruction. In the face of danger and trauma, Iraqis continue to cope, preparing food, sending their children to school, socializing, telling jokes, and dreaming of a better future. Within the realm of imagination and creative expression, the editors find that many Iraqi artists have not only survived but have also sought healing. In We Are Iraqis, Al-Ali and Al-Najjar showcase written and visual contributions by Iraqi artists, writers, poets, filmmakers, photographers, and activists. Contributors explore the way Iraqis retain, subvert, and produce art and activism as ways of coping with despair and resisting chaos and destruction. The first anthology of its kind, We Are Iraqis brings into focus the multitude of ethnicities, religions, and experiences that are all part of Iraq.

The book documents the history of the legendary Sámi artist collective Mázejoavku (1978-1983), and deals with the importance of the group historically and also in relation to other Sámi artists and Indigenous collectives and practitioners globally today. The Sámi Artist Group was the first generation of young Sámi artists to regain pride in their Sámi heritage, to express their Sáminess freely, and to reclaim a renewed space within Sápmi by advocating and negotiating Sámi thinking and being through the arts. The book is based on individual interviews and extensive research by author Susanne Hætta. In addition it includes a rich selection of archival photographic material, as well as texts by Yorta Yorta curator and writer Kimberley Moulton, Spanish/British art historian Katya García-Antón and Sámi scholar and duojár Liisa-Rávná Finbog. The publication is edited by Katya García-Antón, and is co-published by Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) and the Sámi publishing house DAT. ___________________ Boken handler om det samiske kunstnerkollektivet Mázejoavku/Masigruppen (1978-1983) og deres betydning betydning historisk i relasjon til andre samiske kunstnere, samt urfolkskollektiver og utøvende kunstnere globalt. Mázejoavku var første generasjon samiske kunstnere som med stolthet åpent stod frem med sin bakgrunn, hevdet sin rett til å være samer, og re-definerte og høynet statusen for samisk kunst. Boken er tuftet på personlige intervjuer og omfattende forskning av forfatteren Susanne Hætta. I tillegg har den et rikt billedmateriale og tekstbidrag fra Yorta Yorta-kurator og skribent Kimberley Moulton, forsker og duojár Liisa-Rávná Finbog, samt den spansk-britiske kunsthistorikeren Katya García-Antón, som også har vært bokens redaktør. Boken publiseres i samarbeid mellom Office for Contemporary Art Norway, OCA, og det samiske forlaget DAT.