Pauliina Feodoroff: Matriarchy

1.-13.12.2022

TANSSIN TALO

ZODIAK

Zodiak – Centre for New Dance is the only producer and venue focusing solely on contemporary dance in Helsinki. Zodiak follows the latest trends in the field of contemporary dance and brings the most fascinating artists and emerging ideas to a stage near you. Zodiak's courses and workshops are your door to a community where everyone is welcomed just as they are.

Zodiak is the foremost producer and venue of contemporary dance and choreography in Finland. Zodiak's facilities are located at the Cable Factory in the district of Ruoholahti in Helsinki.

Zodiak's program of performances is artistically curated and primarily based on an open call. Zodiak’s production activities are based on a changing line-up of artists in different productions, financial co-production support and an extensive offering of premieres. We pride ourselves in collaboration.

More Info>> ZODIAK.FI

The Sámi Pavilion

In an historic first, the Nordic Pavilion in Venice has transformed into 'The Sámi Pavilion', with a project commissioned by Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) featuring the Sámi artists Pauliina Feodoroff, Máret Ánne Sara and Anders Sunna during the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2022. This transformation of the Nordic Pavilion celebrates the art and sovereignty of the Indigenous Sámi people, whose nation extends across the Nordic countries and into the Kola Peninsula in Russia.

'The Sámi Pavilion' project is curated by a group consisting of Sámi scholar Liisa-Rávná Finbog, OCA’s Director Katya García-Antón and Sámi land guardian Beaska Niillas; curatorial assistants: Liv Brissach, Raisa Porsanger and Martina Petrelli. Following the Sámi custom of learning from elders of the community, the selected artists benefited from the individual guidance of chosen elders Karen Ellen Marie Siri Utsi, Asta Mitkijá Balto and Ánde Somby. In partnership with Sámi University College, the 'Sámi Pathfinders' programme brings together students from across Sápmi to act as mediators for ‘The Sámi Pavilion’ project. The 'Sámi Pathfinders' guide visitors through the exhibition, offering insights on culture and society from a Sámi perspective.

More Info>> The Sámi Pavilion

Arriving at Tanssin talo

Dance House Helsinki is located in Ruoholahti, Helsinki, at Kaapeliaukio 3. The entrance is located in the covered Glass Courtyard of Cable Factory, which is also accessible from the other end of the building at Tallberginkatu 1. All routes are accessible.

We recommend arriving by public transport, on foot or by bicycle. Find the most convenient route and mode of transport in HSL’s Journey Planner.

Useful links:

https://www.zodiak.fi/en

https://oca.no/thesamipavilion

https://www.tanssintalo.fi/en

ZODIAK social media channels

The Sámi Pavilion social media channels

The working group:

Direction and performers: Biret Haarla Pieski, Gáddjá Haarla Pieski, Satu Herrala, Outi Pieski, Eséte Eshetu Sutinen, Hanna Parry, Pauliina Feodoroff
Forrest work: Osuuskunta Lumimuutos, Miltä Sopu Näyttää, Marja Helander
Camera: Kevin Francett, Petri Mentu, Markus Moshnikoff, Susanna Rauno, Hanna Parry, Terike Haapoja, Pauliina Feodoroff, Stina Aletta Aikio
Sound design: Lehmus Murtomaa
Lighting design: Jenni Pystynen
Music: Anna Morottaja, 169, Mari Boine
Language planning: Christoph Parry
Sámi Elder: Asta Mitkijá Balto
Spatial and costume design, objects: Outi Pieski and Hanna Parry, Ulyana Yulina
Biret Haarla's costume: Ramona Irene Salo
Sculptor: Teuri Haarla

Co-producers: Sámi Pavillion / Venice Biennale 2022, Zodiak – Center for New Dance; What Form(s) Can an Atonement Take / Miltä Sopu Näyttää Project, funded by Kone Foundation.

The Sámi Pavilion is Commissioned by OCA – Office for Contemporary Art Norway, with co-commissioners Kiasma (Helsinki) and Moderna Museet (Stockholm)

Helsinki Premiere

Duration: 90min.

Finland has treated the ancestral land we have lived in for centuries as their natural resource to exploit and sell piece by piece to any market that needs it. Sámi forests are logged for toilet paper. I have spent my life documenting all the losses on multiple levels, but now it’s vital to focus on what we still have and how to make it stronger. When the earth is transforming, life needs havens and time to adapt. My work proposes ways to protect the last remaining old growth forests and let the logged areas have a time to heal. Our message is, please do not buy our land, buy our art instead.

— Pauliina Feodoroff

Matriarchy

“ … look at this landscape. I’d like you to buy this view for your collection, I am begging you to buy this view for your collection. Buy our art not our land … “

Matriarchy is a collective performance of healing and renewal, conceived as a process of rematriation to return to a world of kinship between people, land, waters, spirits, and other-than human beings.

“Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples have never properly greeted each other”, as director Pauliina Feodoroff explains when describing the first part of the performance, titled First Contact. In this first section, the performance contrasts colonised and Indigenous gesturality.

Part two, Auction, presents images of Sámi landscapes currently under threat from commercial logging. These land(person)scapes, portraying the land and related guardians, are ‘auctioned off’ as artworks during the performance, setting the scene for the actual sale of the works that is happening in real time, as a parallel process of the project.

In part three, Matriarchy, Indigenous female bodies converge in actions that ask us to be aware of our responsibilities in a world of relations. The performance centres matriarchal values of care and collective models of existence to restore sovereign forms of living in Sámi society.

Matriarchy was created for and premiered at The Sámi Pavilion, as part of the Venice Biennale 2022

Pauliina Feodoroff

Pauliina Feodoroff (b. 1977) is a Skolt Sámi theatre director, artist and land guardian from Keväjäu’rr in the Finnish part of Sápmi and Suõ’nnjel, in the Russian part. She connects various fields of knowledge – Sámi, artistic, scientific – in theatre and film projects and also in political activism and ecological restoration projects. She is known for the film Non Profit, 2007, and the play CO2lonialNATION that premiered at Giron Sámi Teáhter, 2017, which questioned colonisation and its consequences in Sápmi through a ‘Theatrical Truth Commission’. She gained a Masters in theatre direction and dramaturgy from the Helsinki Theatre Academy in 2002 and has worked as the artistic director of Takomo Theatre and the Rospuutto Theatre Group, both in Helsinki, Finland. For the theatre festival Baltic Circle Helsinki in 2017 she curated the artistic and discursive programme ‘Vuosttaš álbmogat / First Nations’ which concentrated on colonisation in the Nordic countries. Several Sámi artists, including Anders Sunna, participated in the programme.

Feodoroff’s family are Skolt Sámi reindeer herders originally from Suõ’nnjel on the Kola peninsula in the Russian part of Sápmi but were forced to move to the Finnish part when the Russian borders were re-drawn and closed in 1944. She was born in Keväjäu’rr on the Finnish side but considers the dispossessed lands as her ancestral homeland. Feodoroff is an advocate for Sámi water and land rights and has served as President of the Saami Council. She co-drafted the mandate for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Finland in 2019.

Her current work is concerned with industrial deforestation and its role in the collapse of the biodiversity of rivers and fishing customs. Her practice is also concerned with the role of modernisation and government policies in destroying the collective models of existence and care for the land that underpin Sámi society. She has worked to preserve reindeer herding in forests on the Finnish side of Sápmi and has investigated the impact of land extraction by mining companies in the Russian part of Sápmi. Feodoroff is an active collaborator with the Snowchange Cooperative, particularly on the project ‘Näätämö River Co-management Plan’, where she coordinates the ecological restoration and management project of the Njâuddam (North Sámi: Njávddam, Finnish: Näätämö, Norwegian: Neiden) river system, a vital river on the Norwegian and Finnish sides of the Skolt Sámi areas. The project aims to use Sámi land-care practices and local and scientific knowledge to protect and restore the waters, fish spawning areas and the surrounding land of the river. In 2018 this inspired the cross-disciplinary project ‘What Form(s) Can an Atonement Take’. In 2019 the restoration of the river Vannikkeejokk and a small rapid called Kirakkakoski in lake Kââ'rekjäu'rr was completed.

In 2015 she collaborated with Snowchange Cooperative on a performance in Sápmi entitled Life in the Cyclic World (Our Songs Have to Change) if We Wish to Change for the Rospuutto Group, which raised awareness of the Climate Change Risk Assessment Report and pushed for the publication of a scientific article written by Tero and Kaisu Mustonen called 'Life in the Cyclic World'. The article provides witness statements by Indigenous peoples of the North about climate change and their interpretations of what climate change is. The CAFF Process commissioned the report, but would not publish it without editing, which the Indigenous communities involved disagreed on. With Feodoroff and Snowchange’s efforts, the report was published in 2016.

Feodoroff has contributed to several book projects including Queering Sápmi, a project by Sarah Lindquist and Elfrida Bergman that challenges gender norms and offers storytelling about the lives of queer Sámi persons, and the Eastern Sámi Atlas by editors Tero Mustonen and Kaisu Mustonen, published by the Snowchange Cooperative, 2011.

Photo by: Michael Miller / OCA