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Jewellery and adornment

Tone Vigeland: Hands on

Tone Vigeland’s art springs from a direct encounter between her hands and her materials. For more than fifty years, she has created jewellery and sculptures that combine simple craft techniques with stringent aesthetics – works apparently liberated from any possible intellectual approach. Perhaps this is why people the world over describe her art as both timeless and placeless, and sometimes even magical.

Liv Blåvarp: Touch Wood

Artist Liv Blåvarp creates spectacular and sculptural necklaces and bracelets out of wood. Her creations are built by individually shaping smaller pieces of wood and joining them together in a spiraling construction, for maximum wearability. In this interview by Reinhold Ziegler we learn more about how Blåvarp came to work with wood, and how she developed the technical competence to create wearable pieces of art.

The Innermost Corner of the Outermost Layer – an interview with Renate D. Dahl, Judit Fritz, and Lauren Kalman

In an interview with three artists, Johanna Zanon explores the theme of the relationship between the body and metal art and jewellery. Renate D. Dahl's work focuses on questioning the social norms and standards associated with the female form. Judit Fritz works at the intersection of crafts and sciences, experimenting with using sweat and tears to grow gemstones. Finally, Lauren Kalman uses craft-based materials in her performance-based videos, photographing and distorting the body in sometimes grotesque and violent ways, in order to explore attraction and repulsion.

Nanna Melland: The Uniqueness of the Masses

Nanna Melland is known for making jewellery with unorthodox materials. In this interview by Monica Holmen we are introduced to her practice which spans from personal jewellery to public installations.

Sigurd Bronger: Jewellery as Absurd Theater

For many years Sigurd Bronger was an outsider in contemporary art jewellery, but now he enjoys increasing attention. In this interview by Reinhold Ziegler we learn about Bronger's way to jewellery, and how expressing absurdity has become his hallmark.

Jewellery Thoughts of Impermanence

In this text, artist Olaf Hodne questions the presupposed permanence of jewellery, and introduces us to three artists, Sayo Ota, Íris Elva Ólafsdóttir, and Kristine Ervik, whose practices embrace perishable materials, making art jewellery not made to last.

Felieke van der Leest: Toy Animals, Yarn, and Glamorous Design

Plastic toy animals, crocheting in yarn, and precious metals, are some of the elements Felieke van der Leest combines to make exciting, humorous, and absurd jewellery. Central to van der List's artistic practice is a fascination with the animal kingdom. Using toys and ready-mades she transformers animal figurines into near-human subjects, complete with clothes and sunglasses.

Inger Blix Kvammen: Memories in Metal

Inger Blix Kvammen's artistic practice relies on a vast number of connections with individuals and communities from around the world. Memories from her travels to Northwest Russia, to Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Southern Caucasus, Turkey and Armenia lay the foundation for the objects she constructs back home in her studio in Hessing, a few kilometres outside of Kirkenes in Finnmark, Norway. In this interview by Hilde Sørstrøm we gain a closer insight into her process.

Recognizing Ground: Where Indigenous and Queer Practices Meet

In this text we get to follow matt lambert and Máret Ánne Sara's conversation, as they explore their shared experiences, their impetuses for creating art, and the role migration, nomadism and land play in their practices.

Baarkaldahke – A Living Cultural Legacy

Lova Isabelle Lundberg introduces us to the South Sami hair tie tradition baarkaldahke through a short film, images and text.

Texture of Practice: Areta Wilkinson

In this presentation by artist and jeweller Areta Wilkinson we are introduced to her practice and how reconnecting with her ancestral kāinga (home) has meant connections to deeper material knowledge and understanding.

Jewellery Thoughts of Impermanence

In this text, artist Olaf Hodne questions the presupposed permanence of jewellery, and introduces us to three artists, Sayo Ota, Íris Elva Ólafsdóttir, and Kristine Ervik, whose practices embrace perishable materials, making art jewellery not made to last.

The Innermost Corner of the Outermost Layer – an interview with Renate D. Dahl, Judit Fritz, and Lauren Kalman

In an interview with three artists, Johanna Zanon explores the theme of the relationship between the body and metal art and jewellery.

The World-Shifting Qualities of Adornment

In this essay, Vivi Touloumidi discusses wearable signs and adornment, their ability to carry sociopolitical messages, and the impact they can have on forming subjects and identities

With this Ring – An Essay Celebrating the Symbolic Meaning of Jewellery

In this essay by Julia Wild and Katharina Dettar, we are invited to contemplate jewellery as a means of communication, directed both inward and outward. Taking the wedding ring as an example, Wild and Dettar investigate its significance in relation to identity, status, materiality, absence, and loss.

Tattoo Archaeology

Humans across the globe have tattooed their bodies for at least 5,000 years. However, the archaeological evidence for these practices has been largely overlooked. In this article, archaeologist Aaron Deter-Wolf describes what drew him to the study of ancient tattooing, and how careful considerations of material culture, including artefacts and preserved human remains, are revealing new information about human bodies in the deep past.

Connecting to the Past: Reclaiming Nordic Heritage through Tattooing

Jannicke Wiese-Hansen and Tor Ola Svennevig invite you into their studio to talk about their craft, promoting Norwegian art and culture, as well as taking their Nordic culture back from the abuse of the extremist right. The two tattoo artists have also written short artist presentations about their personal journeys within the tattoo field.

Inuit Tattoo Traditions and the Complexities of a Revival

Maya Sialuk Jacobsen writes about the complexities of taking back Inuit tattoo traditions, a practice born and developed within a culture of collectivism, now practiced and re-assembled in a growing individualistic culture. Sialuk Jacobsen asks: ‘How do Inuit tattoos create both a new verbal and visual language?’

Part Psychologist, Part Mind Reader, Part Artist

How has the tattoo industry changed in the last ten years or so? Oslo-based tattoo artists Linn Aasne Grønnerøe and Elise Nedal offer throwbacks and foresight based on their years of experience. In this interview, they map out some major challenges and pitfalls of the tattoo industry, and how to avoid them.

Art that hits a nerve

In this text, Marita Wikstrøm Svěrák introduces us to the field of body piercings, scarification, and body suspension. She explains the craftsmanship behind the different practices, as well as her fascination with scars and the importance of pain.

I'm Interested in Creating Superbeings

Holistic tattooer Touka Voodoo takes us through his personal journey — from Tehran, through London — to his tattoo studio in Stockholm.

Monumental Duodji? Craft and Care in Outi Pieski’s Public Artworks

In this article by professor in art history Elin Haugdal, we are introduced to the artwork AAhkA by Sámi artist Outi Pieski, planned for the new government quarter in central Oslo. The integrated artwork comprises a 50-metre-high wooden relief, portraying a female figure, which will be visible day and night through the transparent walls when the building, ‘A-block’, is completed in 2025. Haugdal discusses the artwork’s relationship to the practice of duodji, to the concept of care, and to the idea of monumentality.

Aslaug Juliussen: A Sense of Sustainability

In this conversation with artist Aslaug Juliussen, Hilde Sørstrøm delves into Juliussen's sustainable approach to material transformation. While her installations and sculptures are made using materials and technique from her Sámi heritage, Juliussen always seek to evolve and transform the materials into something new.

Duodji as a Starting Point for Artistic Practice

In this essay curator and duojár Gry-Kristina Fors Spein reflects on the Sámi concept of duodji as a starting point for artistic practice.

Iver Jåks: Duodji as Indigenous Contemporary Art Practice

Iver Jåks' artistic talent became obvious during a long period of hospitalisation following a reindeer herding accident in his youth, and he was admitted to the Sámi folk high school in 1950, when he was 18 years old. Set on becoming an artist he later attended the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry and later the Art Academy in Copenhagen. His artistic practice incorporated Sámi duodji objects, materials, and techniques, in addition to drawing, large-scale sculptures and art in public space. In this article by Irene Snarby we learn about the life and art of Iver Jåks, and about duodji as a contemporary art practice.

Perisak Juuso: A Conversation with Perisak Juuso

In this conversation, Irene Snarby talks to duojar Perisak Juuso about the landscape and Sámi place names, and about the in-depth knowledge you need in order to find the right burls, roots or antlers to make beautiful duodji.

Joar Nango: Duodji as part of Philosophy and Cosmology

Namita Gupta Wiggers in conversation with Joar Nango about shelter, nomadism, and the Sámi concept of duodji

The Landscapes Within: Monika Svonni

Monika Svonni is a multi-disciplinary artist living in Jåhkåmåhkke. Her oeuvre consists mainly of textile collages that incorporate pewter thread embroidery and reindeer hide, but she also works with wood carvings and sculptures in a variety of materials. In this interview by the editor, artist and curator Carola Grahn we are introduced to Monika Svonni's work through many years, and her outlook on life and art.

Keeping the Flame of Ancestral Tradition Burning

The Sámi gietkka, a cradle for newborn children, has an ingenious design suited for a nomadic lifestyle. In this text, duojárat and couple Fredrik Prost and Inga-Wiktoria Påve talk about two old cradles that were left in their care from each of their families, and how they made them fit for new generations with the help of each other, their ancestors, and sketches from the 1930s.

Reconstructing Gábde Based on Racial Biology Archives

In 2022, it was one hundred years ago that the Swedish State Institute for Racial Biology was established in Uppsala, Sweden. Many ethnic groups and other socially vulnerable subgroups were measured, tested, and photographed in the name of racial biology. The Sami were one of them. In this article, the duodjár and textile artist Katarina Spik Skum describes how she came to use the photographic archive of the Institute for Racial Biology as a source of inspiration for the creation of gábde from the Lule Sami area.

Baarkaldahke – A Living Cultural Legacy

Lova Isabelle Lundberg introduces us to the South Sami hair tie tradition baarkaldahke through a short film, images and text.

Memories in Archives – Archived Memories

Essay on Sámi and Kven museum collections by writer and photographer Susanne Hætta