City Boy’s reading of the works of Sámi artist Mary Anne Sarah Exhibitions

Jonathan Jones’s review of Marit Anne Sarah’s installation at Tate Modern in London completely misses the mark (October 13). The land on which the Sami live is “very large,” just like Turbine Hall, Jones says, but the Sami do not control their entire landscape. They live inside it.

The “fort” is not a place to “hide”. It is city boy reading rather than a deeper understanding of the ancient methods used by Sami families to herd reindeer on their vast lands, along with the political realities surrounding them. Jones is too close to the playing fields and not close enough to the facts of Sámi and Northern political history.

My Finnish Sámi grandmother often talked about her approach and reaction to the expanding Sápmi region, which lies on the border between the Russians, the Swedes, and the Finns (and Germans), who have historically brutalized and terrorized the Sámi peoples. for me My verse He was never afraid of the landscape, but he was keenly aware of the hostility of those from outside. In order to survive, one had to be able to quickly move to safe and unseen places. No one can disappear into the landscape better than sublime mothers with their children.

Jones criticizes the composition’s “exquisitely decorative” arrangement of “washed and clean” reindeer skins. Reindeer skins have long been reserved as decoration, but every Sami home has a clean one – for children, for warmth, for sleeping, and for dying. Maybe not gory enough to satisfy Western appetites. This is certainly not enough for Jones, who suggests that slaughtering and serving reindeer meat as part of the installation may have improved them.
Lin Su
London

I was appalled by Jonathan Jones’ review. Has he ever visited any of the Nordic countries or been north of the Arctic Circle? My husband, a Finn, and my daughter and I immediately recognized the representational art of the spirit of an Arctic village.

There is something incredibly unique and, ultimately, something original about being in these northern villages. Maybe it’s the absolute silence that sometimes falls over the forests. Everyday life is not silent, but the silence of the forest after a day’s work is peace. Isn’t art art unless it includes some blood, or a display of violence? The artist has captured the structured existence necessary for survival in harsh conditions and the peace that comes from living with nature rather than against it.
Margaret Sumner-Wishman
Questa, New Mexico, United States