How do you keep an Indigenous cultural tradition alive in a fast-paced modern world? How about turning this into wallpaper? That’s what Outi Pieski does in his work that humorously reimagines Andy Warhol’s pop art cow wallpaper; but the image repeated here is a woman wearing a hat. ladjogahpirA hat that was once part of the dress of Sámi women in northern Finland and Norway. It is red, hot, and has a horn or crown on top in the shape of an inverted shoe. Young women who proudly wear this ancestral headdress, Pieski ladjogahpir and makes it visible again.
He photographs the bright hats alone, in pairs, and worn. This part of his fascinating exhibition at Tate St Ives is ironically set up like a fashion store. This is the closest his work comes to the consumerist urban norms of 21st century Europe. But his heart lies in the mountains and ice fields of the far north, in another time stream where the landscapes are alive and the forests have eyes. He sees the world with the passion of a campaigner and the vision of a remarkable artist.
Pieski was born in the modern world, more specifically in Helsinki, in 1973, but comes from Sámi heritage. Its people have lived in the Arctic Circle for millennia, have animist and shamanistic beliefs, and many practice a nomadic lifestyle with reindeer herds. Their traditional, bright costumes are useful for the icy regions of the north. But the modern world’s ability to force everyone into the same lifestyle has eroded Sámi survival on the frontier of Europe. Pieski is committed to the fight.
That’s why his art is cheerful and somber; a riot of color in a vast, eerie landscape of mountains and forests. Pop art horned hats bring the ritual to life in an amiable and humorous way, but as you delve deeper into this exhibit you are transported to unfamiliar places. Pieski’s painting Near the Aspens looms at the far end; it’s a very long, narrow canvas, making you feel like you’re actually in a forest, looking at trees that look as tall as real trees. And this forest is haunted. Two eyes shine darkly from among the poplar trees overhead. It is impossible to tell which creature possesses these huge spheres; But this is not human. However, perhaps a shaman can enter the being who has these eyes.
More eyes stare at you from a black-gnarled, turbulent hill, like a world freshly frozen from cooling lava, in another large painting that Pieski says is “a tribute to those who taught me to protect myself from evil spirits.” These pictures are great. His acrylics reflect the far north with intense realism and unreality. The striped Arctic sky, the pale layers of color under the weak sun, remind one of Edvard Munch. A vast expanse of brittle ice bears the chilling majesty of JMW Turner’s paintings of Arctic whalers.
But like Anselm Kiefer, Pieski uses his talent for painting almost casually. He proposes this by embedding landscape art within woven, multicolored Sámi works that transform the paintings into magic.
His canvases are hung with hand-knotted tassels made in the Sámi technique. duodji. These swirls and stripes of color not only frame the paintings, but also existentially transform them: they illuminate the icy worlds they paint with life and brightness. Who knew there were so many yellows, blues and oranges? duodji It comes with a subtle exuberance of hue. The countless threads do not shine brightly like city lights. Instead, they illuminate nature with elusive filaments, like sunlight refracted through a melting icicle.
Sámi handcrafted decorations make Pieski’s paintings feel like objects to be used in magical rituals to rekindle the forces of nature. This mystical intent is evident in the installation at the center of the show, especially from its title: Cast a Spell on You. It consists of hand-knotted tassels suspended in huge movements that surround you and subject you to a kind of magical binding.
From within this cathedral of northern light, his paintings are positioned like compass points: One path leads to the towering spirit of the cottonwoods, the other to a dark, feathery line in a landscape of snow and ash. This large painting pays homage to a mountain in Norway called Rástegáisa. But he doesn’t do this for the sake of art, or even magic. The title of the painting is The Right to Independent Existence and Development: a call for the recognition of this mountain, sacred in Sámi culture, as a legal person with its own natural rights.
Thus, nature literally comes to life in Pieski’s art. He defends his Sámi heritage with a courage that has a real impact on how Europe treats this marginalized culture: ladjogahpir hats led me directly to a German museum website documenting Pieski’s intervention in a collection of Sámi artifacts. In other words, it makes museums rethink how they should treat the heritage of a people whose lands have been colonized and whose beliefs have been persecuted since the Reformation or before. While such objects may seem like remnants of a distant, lost world, Pieski shows that Sámi culture still sparkles with energy.
It’s a power we need. In the Indigenous vision of the world that Pieski has turned into such fine art, there is no insurmountable barrier between humans and nature. The forests have eyes, the sun lives in a knotted braid. The Arctic and its people may be in danger. But this truly original artist can make you feel one with his mountains, seas, people and souls.
• Outi Pieski is at Tate St Ives until 6 May