Colonialism has until recently been a topic which have rarely been discussed in relation to Norwegian art history. In a Norwegian context, colonialism has instead been understood as something that happened “elsewhere” in time or space.
Hence, colonialism has often been associated with the histories of colonial empires such as the British, French or the Dutch, with more relevance to historians or anthropologists working with ethnographic materials than art historians working on material pertaining Norway. In this lecture I seek to complicate the tradition of colonial ignorance in Norwegian art history by arguing for the importance of the concepts of colonialism and coloniality to discussions on art and art history in a Nordic context. With specific focus on the unfinished history of the colonization of Sápmi, this lecture analyzes artists who took active part in the Danish-Norwegian imperialist projects in Sápmi from the 17th century and onwards, as well as how Sámi artists have used aesthetic practices in resistance to the changing colonial systems up until today.