The exhibition Čáppatvuohta ja duohtavuohta / Beauty and Truth is one outcome of SARP which as a research project has run since 2009 at the department of art history at The University of Tromsø. One aim for SARP has been to gain more empirical knowledge on Sami art, firmly establishing it as part of the art historical discourse. This research implies a will to make Sami art more visible and valuable in an art historical context and as a field for art historical research.
Throughout the research project several artists have played important roles. In Čáppatvuohta ja duohtavuohta / Beauty and Truth, the cooperation and dialogue between researchers and artists will move from the field of research to the exhibition space.
The encounter between art and art historical methods and discourses is however not without frictions. Thus another critical goal for SARP has been to develop new theoretical approaches and understandings of Sami art. The exhibition, together with a wide reaching public program and a book to be published in October by Orkana Akademisk, is an attempt to pass on some of the research in line with a critical perspective.
The exhibition Cáppatvuohta ja duohtavuohta / Beauty and Truth will try to open up for a dialogue between research on Sami art and Sami artists’ contemporary practice as an exploration of the relationship between art and science based in the philosopher Ernst Cassirer’s thoughts. Cassirer claims that while language and science are abbreviations of reality, the work of art in a like manner implies an act of condensation and concentration. Language and science depends upon the same process of abstraction, he says, while art can be described as a continuous process of concretion. Cassirer gives art a special ability to discover reality, rather than to imitate it. The encounter between research’s abstraction and art’s condensation of reality can, in Cassirer’s understanding, be described as a dialogue between truth and beauty – two different, but equally valued forms of cognition.
The exhibition is curated by Hanna Horsberg Hansen, Irene Snarby and Tone Tingvoll for SARP, and Hanne Gudrun Gulljord and Leif Magne Tangen for Tromsø Kunstforening.
The book Beauty and Truth - Cáppatvuohta ja Duohtavuohta, published by Orkana Akademisk, will be released on Friday, October 24th, 2014, at 11am at Tromsø Kunstforening. The book is in both Sami and English. It contains an introductory essay by Hanna Horsberg Hansen, two in depth essays by Irene Snarby and Tone Tingvoll, as well as written contributions from the participating artists.
Pre-order a copy: post@tromsokunstforening.no
The public program for the exhibition contains talks, seminars, walks, performances and children’s workshops. Additionally, the documentation of the exhibited works and their reference works can be researched online: www.tkf-sarp.no
The exhibition and the book is generously supported by the University of Tromsø, Norwegian Arts Council, the Freedom of Speech Foundation and the Sámediggi.
Tromsø Kunstforening is financially supported by the Municipality of Tromsø, the Post 74 of the Cultural Ministry of Norway under the Section for Visual Art at the Norwegian Arts Council and the Troms County Council.