//IDENTITY//
Identity includes the many relationships people cultivate, such as our identity as a child, friend, partner, and parent. It involves external characteristics over which we have little or no control, such as height, race, or socioeconomic class. Identity also encompasses political opinions, moral attitudes, and religious beliefs, all of which guide the choices we make on a daily basis.
the distinguishing character or personality of an individual
Tomas Colbengtson
//SAMIE PEOPLE EXISTED LONG BEFORE THE SWEDISH STATE WAS FORMED AND WILL STILL EXIST LONG AFTER THE NATION STATES HAVE DISAPPEARED//
Tomas Colbengtson is sami, the indigenous nomadic reindeer-people who lives in the northern parts of Scandinavia. He is born in a small sæmie village of Björkvattnet Tärna northern Sweden. In his works he often refers to sami culture, investigating cultural identity, history and indigenous peoples contemporary situation. Tomas explore images, colors and forms based from sami culture and the nordic Scandinavian landscape.
He is experimenting with combinations of media and material and has developed a new way to print screen prints in overlay glass often working with screen-print on metal, (aluminium, brass, silver) and working with etching and digital art technique. Colbengtson is exhibiting international, public artwork in Sweden and Finland.
Colbengtson has been working as artist since 1991 and have exhibited in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Greenland, USA, Canada, Russia, Brasil, Germany, Italy, Greece, Holland, France, Spain, Egypt, Austria, Swiss, Iceland, Faerovisland,Canada and Japan.Tomas Colbengtson is represented in new National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norwayand Sami-parlament Karasjok Norway
Susanne Hætta
Susanne Hætta [f. 1975] is sami artist photographer and author from Alta, on the Norwegian side of Sápmi.
In photography, she is concerned with landscapes and individual’s connection to them, but has also used blood in her works as a medium to talk about fertility, religion, kinship and sexuality. Hätta has been represented at several exhibitions, including /Let the River Flow./ The Sovereign Will and the Making of a New Worldliness at the Office for Contemporary Art Norway in Oslo 2018, also shown in several places in the Nordics in 2019. In 2022 she had a photographic work and sculptures at the opening exhibition I call it art at the National Museum, and currently has the traveling exhibition /KOR; We Live Together/ with Johan Sara jr., which deals with Finnmark as both a mental state as a geographically and identity area. Hætta has published several books, including photo portrait books about artist Synnøve Persen and artist Mari Boine, as well as the pioneers of the Sami artist group Mázejoavku.
Torgrim Halvari
Torgrim Hermansen Halvari (b. 1965) is a Norwegian Sami photographer and journalist with a master’s degree in documentary photography. He has also studied journalism, social anthropology, sociology, culture, the culture of the north and more.
The images presented here are a part of a new project in collaboration with Ramona Salo and Katharina Skår Lisa. Ramona is a textile artist and Katharina is a dancer and choreographer. The collaboration focuses on the organic interface of the textile and landscape set in the its cultural history.
He currently works as an information officer in the Norwegian Officers and Specialists Association, but spends his spare time as a photographer and artist. He is affiliated with the Norwegian Photographer’s Association and is a member and board member of the Sami Artists’ Association, and a board member of the Sami Center for Contemporary Art. As a photographer, Halvari has had several exhibitions where his portraits tell a bigger story and the photograph communicates with the viewer on several levels. Halvari has worked for years in the Balkans, Middle East, Pakistan and more. He uses several different cameras and techniques
Ole Marius Joergensen
Ole Marius Joergensen [b.1976] is a fine art photographer based in the small town of Asker, just outside of Oslo. As a rural Norwegian child of the 1980s, he became fascinated with Steven Spielberg and Stephen Kings views of suburban America and was inspired to create his own narratives about an imaginary place where the individual takes center stage. Using humor and elements of surrealism, Joergensen presents narratives that allow the viewer to create their own endings, as they observe the daily activities of people within nature. Like a filmmaker, he presents scenes meant to be seen together, as a story slowly unfolds.
Through his work, Joergensen examines the changes happening in rural Norway where the land, and the quiet way of living, is slowly fading due to modernization.
In his last series “All that was Left was a Yellow Duck,” Joergensen references the Norwegian painter Hans Gude, whose depictions of the landscape and its people reflect the realities of rural life.
Tom Russell
