Kin Museum shows Johan Turi’s Sámi art ahead of Sweden’s truth commission handover

Kin Museum in Kiruna is showing Johan Turi’s accounts of Sámi life alongside work by two contemporary artists as Sweden’s Truth Commission for the Sámi People prepares to hand its final report to the government on 30 September. The exhibition gives visitors a way to examine a century of Sámi art and experience before the commission’s findings are made public.

The exhibition, On the Ugly and the Beautiful, opened on 5 September and is scheduled to run until 24 April 2027. Kin says it is the first exhibition in nearly a century to present works by Turi, who lived from 1854 to 1936. His drawings appear with sculptures, paintings and photographs by Outi Pieski and work by architect and duojár Johanna Minde.

A record of everyday life

Turi is widely regarded as the first Sámi author to write about Sámi life in his own language. His book Muitalus sámiid birra, or An Account of the Sámi, appeared in North Sámi and Danish in 1910; a Swedish edition followed seven years later. Kin says the book draws on his experience in a reindeer-herding family in the region around present-day Kiruna and Lake Torneträsk.

The subjects are both practical and personal: reindeer herding, hunting and trapping sit alongside belief systems, traditional healing, childbirth and joik. Turi accompanied his writing with drawings collected in a separate atlas. Kin presents detailed descriptive drawings, images made with carved stamps that he sold to tourists, and expressive works depicting mythical or dreamlike subjects.

Pieski told The Guardian that she grew up with Turi’s writing and drawings. She sees the paper in his images as land on which people, animals and other life are situated, rather than as scenery viewed from a distance. In her account, Turi’s work also speaks to present-day disputes over industrial land use. Those connections are the artist’s interpretation, not findings from the commission’s final report.

Pieski’s work in the exhibition addresses inherited knowledge, cultural continuity and the climate crisis, according to Kin. The Guardian also reports that research by Pieski and Eeva-Kristiina Nylander into the ládjogahpir, a traditional hat worn by Sámi women, has helped bring it back into use. Pieski described it to the newspaper as a symbol of decolonial feminism.

Minde’s contribution takes another route into Turi’s practice. Kin says the architect and duojár focuses on a wooden stool that he designed, drawing attention to his ingenuity beyond books and pictures. The museum places all three artists’ work in conversation through their ties to Sámi culture, land and living beings.

What the commission has said so far

Mid Sweden University says the commission plans to deliver both its final report and a volume of testimony at its campus in Staare/Östersund on 30 September. The university says the testimony volume draws on more than 300 interviews and written accounts from Sámi people across Saepmie. It was planned as a book of about 200 pages containing summaries and quotations.

The commission was tasked with examining policies toward Sámi people, making their experiences and the consequences of historical wrongs better understood, and proposing measures to support redress and reconciliation, according to the university. Its conclusions and recommendations cannot yet be described as known: the scheduled handover falls two days after this article’s 28 September news date.

Earlier reporting gives an indication of issues raised during the commission’s work, without standing in for the final report. In June, commission member Krister Stoor told SVT that language loss, identity, and rights to land and water were recurring themes. He said interviews described people who had struggled and experienced discrimination.

Another commission member, Marie B. Hagsgård, told SVT that wider understanding of the effects of past policy was needed for democratic and political discussion about the future. The planned handover will make the commission’s own account available for that discussion. Whether its recommendations lead to government measures remains an open question.

The Guardian reports that Kin plans a special exhibition tour during handover week, followed by a reading of testimonies nearby. The events bring Turi’s record of Sámi life and the commission’s collected accounts into the same week, while leaving the report’s findings to be assessed after its delivery.