Saminiatures/Contemporary Sami Artists
Imago Mundi – Luciano Benetton Collection, Treviso
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Saminiatures/Contemporary Sami Artists is the collection focusing on the Sami people that Imago Mundi – not for profit and global artistic project promoted by Luciano Benetton – presents in a world premiere.
The scheduled event on Saturday 28th October at 6pm which – as is the musical and poetic tradition for the Sami – will be preceded by a Yoik chant performed by artist Heidi Perdatter Greiner Haaker, will be attended by Guja Mabellini, project leader of the collection, together with co-curators Tina Sovkina (Russia), Lars Nordby (Scandinavian area: Norway, Sweden, Finland) and Marlene Wisuri (North America).
The Sami are the minority inhabiting the vast icy expanses of the Great North of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, who make up an ethnically, culturally and politically close trans-national group, with small communities even in North America. An indigenous people with a history rich in traditions – the first records of settlements in Scandinavia date back to 6,000 BC – originally nomadic and great breeders of reindeer, fishermen and hunters.
The 140, 10×12 centimetre canvasses of the Imago Mundi collection, the product of the creativity of the many artists involved, reflect the close relationship of these people with their land and traditions: the brightness of the ice and snow – which in the Sami language has 180 definitions –, the colourful and cheerful traditional costumes and the long winters, when the arctic night is the absolute master, offset by the perpetual light of the boreal summer, the love for nature which should be protected and preserved, the great challenges posed to the Sami people by climate change and the need to keep abreast of modernity, without giving up their culture and traditional values.