After LB°24

In addition to presenting artworks, events and projects during our exhibition periods every second year, Luleåbiennalen aims to facilitate long term development in the region in which we operate, as well as for our various, recurring and temporary, partners and participants. By providing a platform for initiating new cross-pollinations and learning together, the biennial strives to be a point of takeoff for lasting and sustainable initiatives and collaborations, reaching far beyond the scope of a single biennial edition.

In the 2024 edition of Luleåbiennalen, architect Eveliina Sarapää was one of the participants presented in the exhibition at Konsthallen Kulturens Hus Luleå. Sarapää’s contribution consisted of a wooden installation, based on traditional Sámi trapping structures in salmon fishing in the River Deadnu; a series of filmed statements from Sámi architects; a film as well as a public presentation during the biennial’s closing programme. Her participation also included the first public appearance of the Sámi Architecture Association—an organisation that had been in development among Sámi architects for a long time but had not yet come into being.

Since the 2024 biennial closed a year and a half ago, Sarapää has been busier than ever, with a series of new collaborations and opportunities. We sat down with her to talk about all that’s happened, and what role an art biennial might have played in her recent adventures.

Luleåbiennalen: Hi Eveliina! It’s been over one year since we last saw you at the 2024 edition of Luleåbiennalen. What are you up to right now?

Eveliina Sarapää: I’ve just arrived from a construction site in the Katajanokka district in central Helsinki. My architecture firm is one of the developers and designers in a project where five new apartments are being built inside the former prison’s old service building. We are interested in how to create housing with as little plastic as possible, using clean and healthy single-material solutions. We work with brick, wood, clay, and so on. I also have a lot of Sámi projects going on right now, including a collaboration with Munch museum and Folkemuseum in Oslo, Helsinki City Museum, Verdde and Inari municipality. The Kone Foundation awarded me a three year working grant to develop Sámi architecture alongside my architectural work, to stimulate discussion about Sámi architecture on the Finnish side, and to support the development of collaboration among Sámi architects.

LB°: You’ve been very busy during the time that has passed since the 2024 biennial. Can you tell us about what life was like for you right after your participation in Luleåbiennalen?

ES: After the biennial, suddenly a lot of things started happening all at once. I think this has been the most fulfilling year of my career so far, and a lot of what has happened has been somehow related to my participation in Luleåbiennalen.

The work I presented at the biennial, Buođđu, was co-produced with Färgfabriken. Right after the biennial it travelled to Stockholm where it was presented as part of their Architecture Triennial in the autumn of 2024. The installation has since arrived home to Utsjoki, where it has gone into the care of the municipality who are really excited about it. It’s exactly where it belongs. The video was presented at the Skábmagovat Film Festival in January.

At the Architecture Triennial, Buođđu was also accompanied by another work, Eatnu, which later found its way to the entrance lobby of the nursing home under construction in Östersund. I continued working with the municipality of Östersund and created another new piece for the building’s façade.

As you know, during the biennial I was part of a panel discussion together with the participants of the project Architecture of Aroha from Sápmi and Aotearoa New Zealand. After the biennial I went on a trip to Aotearoa together with Joar Nango and other sámi architects and duojárs. There we met Māori architects and artists and discussed various possible ways for us to keep collaborating. We also built Joar’s work Girjegumpi together at Galleria Object Space in Auckland.

I have also written a few articles related to Sámi architecture, for example for the new Nordic architecture journal Nordisk Revy for Arkitektur and for a Finnish art magazine called Kaltio. For Kaltio, I envisioned a ‘manifesto of Sámi architecture,’ and we are actually currently developing it further together with Sámi architects. Our hope is to publish a manifesto that could, in the future, serve as the basis for building guidelines for Sápmi. This is also connected to the project Oadjut which I am working on together with Verdde in Giron (Kiruna).

LB°: Were there any new ideas or thoughts that were sparked for you during your participation in the biennial?

ES: Luleåbiennalen was the first art biennial I had ever taken part in. Until then, my work as an architect had been a very typical architectural practice. Still, it was a challenge of its own kind to do something completely different.

The biennial takes place in the Norrbotten region, and one of its themes was the conflicts in land use caused by the “green transition.” I didn’t know the region beforehand. For us Sámi, however, the threats to our culture caused by land use and climate change are very similar across all of Sápmi. Preserving our traditional knowledge for future generations is essential for the survival of Sámi culture. My own work eventually focused on documenting this knowledge and reinterpreting it through contemporary architecture—through a story that became quite personal.

I believe the most significant shift in my thinking came from the push to take action that the biennial provided, and from the realisation that my personal history represents a broader collective experience—whether I like it or not. I understood that I could create something from my own individual perspective, and that I did not need to speak on behalf of a large and diverse group. That opened everything up.

I think taking part in the biennial helped me expand my thinking and see new possibilities within my practice. The context of a contemporary art biennial—and the fact that, as an architect, I was treated in the same way as professional artists—placed me in a completely new state of mind. The framework of the biennial made it easier to pause and reflect on the complex philosophical aspects of the work in the context of art, something that can easily be forgotten in the world of architecture.

As an architect, you often end up working on projects in a constant “roll”: you take on one assignment and solve it, then move on to the next and solve that. There is little time to cross boundaries, and there is always a client who pays and whose interests shape the work. In that sense, the biennial was a turning point in my thinking. It placed me in a new position, gave me new tools, and made visible to me just how many possibilities there truly are—and how much work is to be done—within the field of Sámi architecture.

LB°: What are your reflections on the 2024 biennial’s thematic focus on “art and architecture”?

ES: What interested me was that it presented a context in which to propose various ideas, stories and realities about architecture through art. It was not, as some might believe, a platform for a 50/50 mix of architecture and art, but very much an art event which merely showed an interest in the world of architecture. To me, this was a rewarding way of facilitating conversations and sparking new ideas. I feel like artists are the frontrunners of society and its development, and without them we would all be more or less stuck in a box. Artists have been the earliest adopters of acknowledging indigenous subjects on a global scale and in my perspective, even more now than before, artists are needed—we need more of these kinds of thinkers in the world.

LB°: What’s next for you?

ES: The experiences of the past year and a half have given my career a great deal of new direction. I feel inspired and committed to finding ways to use my professional skills to support contemporary Sámi culture. Of course, I also want to continue working with the preservation and care of buildings.

I am currently very excited about the new project Oadjut starting in Sápmi together with Verdde. I’m grateful that through Luleåbiennalen I was able to dive headfirst into the world of Sámi architecture, and my dream is to design more Sámi architecture concretely in Sápmi. I’m looking forward to everything that’s ahead!

December 2025