ANDERS SUNNA, TORNELAPPMARK

The spirited mix of explicitly political statements, history, references to duodji and Sami mysticism, graffiti, mural painting, sublime nature romanticism, and expressive roars of color, also inhabit something unusual: a conviction about art’s function as a means of communication.
Sebastian Johans

The works of Anders Sunna articulate a sense of picturesque brutality. With a painterliness verging on pure fury, he depicts an equally merciless reality in heavy, opaque fields of color contrasted against thinly applied layers of paint, running spray paint, collage and found materials. Sunna renders an explosive political content colored by personal experiences. Authoritarian, threatening and heavily symbol laden architecture cuts through landscapes where traces of conflict are further enhanced by mounds of skulls and barbwire. 

Anders Sunna was born in Kieksiäisvaara, Sweden, 1985. He lives and works in Jokkmokk, Sweden. Sunna studied at Konstfack – University of Arts, Craft and Design (2006 – 2009). He participated in The Moderna Exhibition, Moderna Museet, 2018; Every Leaf is an Eye, Göteborgs Konsthall, 2019 – 2020; The trees, light green: Landscape painting – past and present, Bonniers Konsthall, 2020; and in the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, 2020. His work is represented in the collection of Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Konstmuseet I Norr – Norrbotten’s County Art Museum, Kiruna, Uppsala konstmuseum, Västerås konstmuseum and at the Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe, USA, among other public collections. 

In 2022 Anders Sunna will partake in the 59th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. Together with artists Pauliina Feodoroff and Máret Ánne Sara he will represent Sápmi, his Sámi homeland, and transform the Nordic Pavilion into the Sámi Pavilion.

A catalogue will be published in connection to Anders Sunna’s exhibition at the gallery.