Britta Marakatt-Labba: Moving the needle
The National Museum, Oslo, NO
15.03. – 25.08.2024
Using needle and thread, Britta Marakatt-Labba creates a rich and varied visual universe, at the heart of which stand the environmental struggle and climate issues seen from an indigenous perspective.
For half a century, Britta Marakatt-Labba (b. 1951 in Idivuoma, Sápmi) has been one of Sápmi’s most prominent artists. The largest exhibition of her art to date, Moving the Needle presents textiles, prints, installations, and sculpture from her extensive production.
Here you can view early sketches and drawings that have never been shown before, and iconic works such as Garjját / The Crows (1981), and Girddi noaiddit / Flying Shamans (1986). At the centre of the exhibition is the monumental work Historjá, a 24-metre-long embroidery depicting scenes from Sami history, mythology, and everyday life.
For her National Museum exhibition, she has created an entirely new work that warns forcefully against the mining of minerals around her home town of Kiruna and the wide-scale industrialisation of nature. As an artist and environmental activist, Britta Marakatt-Labba has been a source of inspiration for a new generation of young people fighting for nature conservation in general and Sami rights in particular.
After countless exhibitions at home and abroad over the past forty years, she is now considered one of the foremost textile artists in Sápmi and the Nordic region
More information can be found here.
Image: Britta Marakatt-Labba, “Drumbeat”, 2012. Photo: Hans-Olof Utsi
