The foundational narrative of Anders Sunna’s work as an artist is rooted in a conflict that has troubled his family since the 1970s.

Contemporary history, personal experiences, and the family’s struggle against the State, county, and Sami village governments constitute a sounding board from which his work resonates. Growing up in the midst of an extended conflict has led Sunna to view his art as an outlet for telling his and his family’s story and for seek­ing the restitution he believes they deserve. According to Sunna, art has the ability to strike the viewer hard because it goes directly to the heart and thereafter to the mind.

Sunna’s painting has an expressive style, with its own iconography in which the conflict is reflected in por­trayals of the police, fencing, bureaucracies, politicians, and burned down buildings. By giving expression to a conflict in the Sami community, Sunna underscores the need for decolonization processes to begin with every individual.

Growing up and not being accepted either in Sami society or in Swedish society has resulted in a survival strategy that is based on fearlessness: “They took the reindeer herding, they took the language, they took the land—everything is gone. What’s left to be afraid of when you’ve already lost everything?” Sunna’s paintings are made up of several layers of stories using a collage technique that carries on the Sami story­telling tradition, which instead of being linear allows different worlds and branches to exist simultaneously. Sunna is also inspired by graffiti, Sami mythology, and the idea that there is something about the creation of pictures that can reach observers when words are simply inadequate.

Sunna has previously painted many different large murals in Norway, Finland, and around Sweden, and it is with this experience in hand that he takes on the Borås Culture House and paints a new work for the 2021 Borås Art Biennial.

Anders Sunna lives and works in Jokkmokk, Sweden. He studied at Konstfack, the University of Arts, Crafts and Design, from 2006 to 2009. Sunna has been featured in exhibitions such as The Modern Exhibition at Moderna Museet (2018); Every Leaf Is an Eye at Göteborgs Konsthall (2019–20); The Trees, Light Green: Landscape Painting – Past and Present at Bonniers Konsthall (2020); and the 22nd Biennale of Sydney (2020). His work is represented in collections such as Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Konstmuseet i Norr, Norrbotten’s County Art Museum, Kiruna; Uppsala konstmuseum; Västerås konstmuseum; and the Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe, USA. In 2022, Sunna is participating in the 59th international Venice Biennale. He will be representing Sápmi, his Sami homeland, and will be transforming the Nordic pavilion into the Sami pavilion.