Matriarchy

“… look at this landscape. I want you to buy this landscape for your collection, I am begging you to buy this landscape for your collection. Please, do not buy our land, buy our art instead ...” – This message is part of the performance Matriarchy, created for the Sámi Pavilion (Venice Biennale 2022).

Skolt Sámi director and Land Guardian Pauliina Feodoroff, and her crew, choreograph situations in which power relations are out of balance and propose a collective path of healing and renewal. A path understood as a process of returning to a world of interconnections between people, land, water, spirits, and other beings. This three-part performance begins with "The First Contact" in front of the Staatstheater’s Großes Haus. This part follows the idea that Indigenous peoples and the western world have never really met and consists of a presentation of gifts and acts of begging.
The second part, "The Auction", continues on the stage and is a commentary on the encounter between Indigenous communities and settlers, and the subsequent asymmetrical relationships and brutal consequences for the Indigenous world: impressive film footage tells of the continuous and large-scale logging of the forests in the northernmost areas of Finland and its extreme effects on the biodiversity and habitats of the Sámi communities. In the final part, "Matriarchy", the performers share their “matriarchy land(e)scapes catalogue” with us: considering the exploitation of natural resources, how can sovereign forms of life be re-established in Sámi society? What role can the matriarchal values of care and collective forms of existence play in this vision of the future? With aesthetic clarity, Matriarchy challenges us to become aware of our responsibility in a world of relationships and poses the currently important question of how artists from colonising and colonised cultures can work together to achieve common goals.

Pauliina Feodoroff is a Skolt Sámi theater director, artist and land guardian from Keväjäu'rr in the Finnish part of Sápmi and Suõ'nnjel in the Russian part. She combines different fields of knowledge - Sami, artistic, scientific - in theater and film projects, but also in political activism and ecological restoration projects. Pauliina Feodoroff was the artistic director of Takomo Theater and Rospuutto Theater Group in Helsinki, Finland. She is an advocate for Sámi water and land rights and was president of the Sámi Council. In 2019, she co-authored the mandate for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Finland.