{"id":6025,"date":"2025-10-17T16:21:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T16:21:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/6025\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T16:21:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T16:21:06","slug":"a-city-boy-reading-of-the-sami-artist-maret-anne-saras-work-exhibitions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/6025\/","title":{"rendered":"A city-boy reading of the S\u00e1mi artist M\u00e1ret \u00c1nne Sara\u2019s work | Exhibitions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Jones\u2019s review of M\u00e1ret \u00c1nne Sara\u2019s installation at Tate Modern in London completely misses the point (13 October<\/a>). The land the S\u00e1mi live in is \u201cquite big\u201d, just as the Turbine Hall is in Jones\u2019s words, but the S\u00e1mi do not take over the entirety of their landscape. They live within it.<\/p>\n

The \u201cfort\u201d is not a place to \u201chide\u201d. That is a city-boy reading rather than a deeper understanding of the ancient methods that S\u00e1mi families use for herding reindeer in the vastness of their lands, combined with the political realities that surround them. Jones is too close to playgrounds and not close enough to the realities of the S\u00e1mi and northern political history.<\/p>\n

My Finnish S\u00e1mi grandmother often spoke about her approach and reaction to the vastness of S\u00e1pmi, bordered as it is between the Russians, the Swedes, the Finns (and the Germans), who have historically brutalised and bullied the S\u00e1mi peoples. My Aiti was never afraid of the landscape, but acutely aware of the hostility of those from the outside. In order to survive, one had to be able to quickly move to places of safety and invisibility. No one can disappear into the landscape better than S\u00e1mi matriarchs with their children.<\/p>\n

Jones criticises the installation\u2019s \u201ccoolly decorative\u201d arrangement of \u201cwashed and clean\u201d reindeer hides. Reindeer hides have long been appropriated as decorative, but every S\u00e1mi home has a clean one \u2013 for babies, for warmth, for sleep, for dying on. Not bloody enough for western appetites, perhaps. Certainly not enough for Mr Jones, who suggests that butchering and serving reindeer meat as part of the installation might have improved it.
Lynne Suo
London<\/p>\n

I was appalled by Jonathan Jones\u2019s review. Has he ever visited any of the Nordic countries or gone north of the Arctic<\/a> Circle? My husband, who is Finnish, my daughter and I immediately recognised the representative art of\u00a0the soul of an Arctic village.<\/p>\n

There is something incredibly unique and, in the end, pristine about existence in these Nordic villages. Maybe it is the ultimate quiet that falls upon the forests at times. Everyday life is not silent, but the forest silence after a day\u2019s work is peace. Is art not art unless it includes some gore, an exhibit of violence? The artist has captured the ordered existence necessary for survival in harsh conditions and the peace that comes from living with nature rather than against it.
Margaret Sumner-Wichmann
Questa, New Mexico, US<\/p>\n

Have an opinion on anything you\u2019ve read in the Guardian today? Please email<\/a> us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jonathan Jones\u2019s review of M\u00e1ret \u00c1nne Sara\u2019s installation at Tate Modern in London completely misses the point (13…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[128,130,129],"class_list":["post-6025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}