How bones, skulls and feathers illustrate an anthology of neglected stories

Reindeer skulls that signify the past traumas and tentative progress of Scandinavia’s Sámi communities. Sprays of macaw feathers celebrating the vivid traditions of Brazil’s Tapirapé people. These are just some of the highlights of “Indigenous Histories,” an absorbing new show recently opened at Norway’s Kode Bergen Art Museum.

Curators representing seven Indigenous regions in South America, North America, Oceania and the Nordic region, have chosen to showcase some 280 works highlighting how cultures from across the globe judge the bones of cherished herds and outrageous plumage as equally artistically important as paintings and prints. The exhibition gathers together a vast range of pieces — both historical and contemporary, by more than 170 artists — including oil paintings and watercolors, photographs, ceramics, carvings, textiles and conceptual installations. Collectively, they illustrate an anthology of “neglected stories,” says Petter Snare, Kode’s director.

In the galleries, each country or territory is given its own space, with rooms dedicated to Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Sápmi, the traditional nation-spanning terrain of the Sámi. The approach emphasizes regional differences — how each Indigenous community connects to their specific climate and landscape, their customs and costumes — but also their shared experiences, most importantly their treatment at the hands of colonial powers.

“Indigenous Histories” corresponds with fresh thinking about what is and what isn’t fine art. In recent years, increased public interest in untold aspects in art history and less rigid curatorial programs have put the artistic canon — with its Eurocentric compass, its predilection for white, male figures and its colonial foundations —under the microscope. Museums are investigating other ways of seeing and showing.

At Kode there are pre-Columbian funerary urns alongside masks of satin ribbons made in modern day Brazil; there are 19^th-century documentary photographs from Lapland, romantic woodcuts of Sámi lovers in the 1920s and contemporary sculptures formed from antlers and juniper. Photographs of Peruvian farm laborers, taken in the early 20^th century, show how Indigenous workers were known by numbers instead of names; while, in the New Zealand section, organic Māori motifs out-swirl Europe’s Art Deco designs.

For contemporary artists working within these communities, there is sometimes a tension between retaining traditional methods and seeking new approaches, says Katarina Spik Skum, a Sámi artist from the Swedish part of Sápmi, who is showing a tent piece made from birch twigs, leather, wool, fur and digitally printed fabric.

And for museums, there are unique challenges with the display of works. “You are concerned that you are using materials that the people who made it would be happy with you using,” explains Philippa Moxon, a textile conservator working on the show. “One of my colleagues had to condition assess the two reindeer stomachs. They’re fascinating. She was presented with something she’d never seen before.”

Vibrant colour, cultural dynamism and anger

Perhaps the most recognizable works at Kode are the iconic “dot” paintings of Aboriginal artists, such as Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri, created in Australia’s Northern Territory in the early 1970s. These are not paintings of landscapes but rather paintings of songs of landscapes. Less well known, but another highlight of the show, are the hugely characterful anamorphic vases with stirrup handles that were created some 2000 years ago by Peru’s Moche civilization.

Along with the vibrant color and cultural dynamism, there is righteous anger and political outrage on view, as artists grapple with the legacy of colonial oppression. A section titled “Activisms” explores what curators describe as a “history of entangled struggle.”

The exhibition is a patchwork of creativity and trauma, and is just one example of a drive to reframe Indigenous art that is building momentum. In 2019, Tate established a new curatorial post dedicated to the field. And at the Venice Biennale in 2022, the Nordic Pavilion was transformed into the Sámi Pavilion, a high-profile showcase for politically charged works.

The climate emergency has changed orthodox opinions about Indigenous communities, says Katya García-Antón, who curated the Venice exhibition and is now director of the Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum in Tromsø. “Indigenous peoples’ perspectives on land, fauna, flora, and waters are distinctly different from the modernist — read western — perspectives that are responsible for this crisis,” she says. Simultaneously, she adds, social justice movements have “mobilized people´s awareness of the historic and current hierarchical and discriminatory nature of our societies.”

The reindeer skull works of Sámi artist Marét Anné Sara, exhibited both in Bergen and Venice, were previously brandished at the Norwegian Parliament in Oslo in protest at governmental dictates on reindeer culls. Showing Indigenous art in the setting of a museum funded by the state — which has impacted rights, conventions and land access and to which much of the art is in response — prompts awkward questions of hypocrisy.

García-Antón discussed this issue with Sámi elders, artists and intellectuals before the opening of the Sámi Pavilion in Venice. “We all agreed there was more to gain than to lose,” says García-Antón, adding that the contribution the event made “to the global awareness of Indigenous perspectives in the arts field, proved that the gamble was worth it.”

In Bergen, that awareness campaign plunges audiences into a deep well of esoteric knowledge, spiritual beliefs, ecological considerations and fine artistry, all acquired over centuries living in sync with nature and within sustainable rather than exploitative cultures. It also shows that this story — while written on the walls in Norway — is ongoing all around the world.

“Indigenous Histories” in collaboration with the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) will run at the Kode Stenersen Museum in Bergen, Norway, until August 25, 2024.

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