MALMO.- In this monumental work of art, Anders Sunna chronicles his family’s half-century-long conflict with the Swedish state. The piece measures 20 meters in length, and the narrative is told in six chapters from the 1970s until today, with one large painting per decade. The paintings are inserted into a wooden structure that also holds an archive of all the legal cases the family has been involved in. Visitors are welcome to browse through the many binders, which contain thousands of documents.

– “Illegal Spirits of Sápmi” depicts a Sámi reindeer-herding family’s fight against the authorities, states exhibition curator Joa Ljungberg. It is a story of drawn-out conflicts with significant personal losses. Behind this family tragedy hides a larger story of oppression with colonial overtones. For Anders Sunna, art has offered an opportunity for redress and a way to voice his family’s defense.

The disputes that have marked the lives of three generations of the Sunna family have their roots in the 1971 Reindeer Husbandry Act and how it came to be interpreted. The counterparty has primarily been Norrbotten County Administration, but in later years, also the Sámi Parliament. Anders Sunna describes how, as a consequence of the conflicts, the family’s reindeer were forcibly relocated, a 30-km (about 18-mile) fence was constructed to prevent the reindeer from returning to their natural grazing lands, Sámi villages were pitted against each other, and the family lost their right to engage in reindeer husbandry.

I remember how worried my mother was when my dad and his brothers were out in the forest where the reindeer were. She paced around and grew increasingly anxious the longer it took…she wondered if they would come home at all or if they would be found shot. That’s how bad it was at its worst (from the artist’s comments about the painting “Area Infected”).

“Illegal Spirits of Sápmi” was first exhibited during the 2022 Venice Biennale. The Nordic Pavilion had been transformed into the Sámi Pavilion, with Pauliina Feodoroff, Máret Ánne Sara, and Anders Sunna as participating artists. The project, which was undertaken at the behest of the OCA–Office for Contemporary Art Norway– celebrated the indigenous Sámi culture and the land area of Sápmi, whose boundaries cross over Norway, Sweden, and Finland as well as part of Russia. In 2022, “Illegal Spirits of Sápmi” was acquired for Moderna Museet’s permanent collection.

On 24 November, a half-day seminar with lectures and discussions will take place in connection with “Förbjuden kulturvecka” ("Forbidden Culture") organized by City of Malmö.