LOOKING LOW – methodological challenges in engaging art beyond established models for value and meaning

Avnnas Muitala Mo Galggat Bargat" - A Sámi methodology of Shape and Form

Liisa-Rávná Finbog/Rámuavuol Liisa-Rávdná, Curator of Indigenous Art, MUNCH

Dr. Finbog is a Sámi Indigenous scholar, duojár, author, and curator whose work explores Sámi aesthetics, materiality, and the politics of indigeneity. For this talk, Finbog will focus on the art of Sámi artist John Savio (1902–1938), examining his approach to shape, form, and material through the Sámi principle avnnas muitala mo galggat bargat—“the material tells you how to work.” Drawing on the concept and practice of duodji, Finbog explores how Savio’s woodcuts and paintings can be understood not simply through the lens of Nordic modernism, but through Sámi ways of relating to materials, land, and making. Using Savio’s practice as a case study, the talk will consider how Sámi aesthetic principles and epistemologies can inform the development of a Sámi methodological framework for art historical inquiry, and how such a framework might shift the terms through which Sámi art and artistic practices are understood.

On Artistic Freedom in Craft. Or the unlimited freedom of being underestimated

Johanna Rosenqvist, Professor in Art History, Linnaeus University, Växjö

Drawing on her extensive study of craft, Rosenqvist provides an important overview of how certain research subjects have been received and often overlooked within the discipline of art history. In this paper, Rosenqvist puts pressure on methodological possibilities and challenges central to the study of art that do not conform to traditional art-historical frameworks.

From (so-called) Retarded to Fluid Folk – seeking new methodological approaches to Norwegian Folk art

Tonje Haugland Sørensen, assistant professor in Art History, Copenhagen University

Within the canonical narrative of Norwegian art history, the role of rural aesthetic traditions has long been held forth as central. However, in branding these traditions as folk art and assigning them to specific ideological frameworks the traditions - such as woodcarving, decorative painting and textiles – has frequently been held forth as authentic expressions of ethnic Norwegian culture, but also as primitive and naïve. A place where these ideological frameworks are readily on display is in the theoretical and methodological concepts employed by academic art historians, and in this presentation, I will focus use one of these concepts - that of folk art being retarded – as a basis for discussing both the ideological structures on display and how these can be methodologically circumvented. Retarded or retardation was employed to define how folk art was (supposedly) lagging behind the development of academic art and how this was (again supposedly) indicative of the lack of cultivation in the rural population. It was an attitude that had consequences not only for the academic scholarship on folk art, but also on its many artisans. Drawing on concepts from anthropology and the history of ideas I will reflect on how concepts like “fluid” and “transfer” might be better approaches to engage with the relationship between folk art and academic art.

Clashes with Canonicity: One Art Historian’s Struggle

Kerry Greaves (she/her), Associate Professor of Art History, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen

Greaves’s research is concerned with absences, oversights, and structural blindspots in modern and contemporary Nordic art and its histories. Her most recent project was Feminist Emergency: Women Artists in Denmark, 1960-Present, which considered the cultural conditions of women artists and feminist art in the region and resulted in the publication Transformative Feminisms: Nordic Art in the Transcultural Present (De Gruyter 2026). Another publication includes Model Collapse: European Contemporary Art in a Time of Democratic Crisis (Manchester University Press 2025), which investigates the precarious relationship between art and democracy since the 1990s. For the seminar, Greaves will discuss her current research in the problematics and paradoxes of canonicity and canon formation and how these might be used productively in art history today, which a special focus on experiences and insights from the classroom and students.

Transatlantic and Transmodern: The collaboration between William H. Johnson and Holcha Krake in the 1930s

Anna Vestergaard Jørgensen, project researcher and curator, SMK – The National Gallery of Denmark

Jørgensen is Principle Investigator for the project More-than-Nordic-Modernisms: A Postcolonial History of Modern Art in the North ca. 1900–1945 (2026-30) which explores artists, artworks, and collections that have been peripheralized because they did not fit established ideas of what counted as “Nordic” or “modern.” Its purpose is to challenge narrow and nation-centered accounts of modern art in the Nordic region by showing how art from this period was shaped by global movement, colonial entanglements, and cultural exchange. For LL, Jørgensen will particularly focus on the collaboration between African American painter William H. Johnson and Danish textile artist Holcha Krake in the 1930s, while reflecting on methodologies to approach peripheralized art histories.

I called it art

Geir Haraldseth, curator at the National Museum in Norway

Haraldseth co-curated the inaugural exhibition «I Call it Art» with Randi Godø at the National Museum in Norway in 2022. The exhibition showed works by 147 contemporary artists based in Norway, all of whom were not represented in the museum collection. Who has been excluded from the collection and why? For LL, Haraldseth will share some reflections from the process, the reception, and speculate on how to exhibit this complex web of values. 

Tonje Haugland Sørensen & Ellen Suneson:

Concluding remarks

Practicing failure – failure as practice

Jenny Grönvall, Visual artist based in Malmö

Grönvall’s performances and sculptures explore artistic expressions associated with “failure,” “amateurism,” and “bad taste”. With particular focus on how the field of art is organised according to both implicit and explicit class structures, Grönvall investigates affects – such as shame, fear, and discomfort - associated with what is considered as “bad taste”. Grönvall’s practice helps us reflect on how such affective responses, or the desire to avoid such responses, often shape artistic choices in research, exhibition practice, and artistic expressions.

Constructions of backwardness and delay

Ellen Suneson, Postdoc in Art History, Lund University

Within art historical narratives, art from places far removed from major cultural centres is often treated as less important, less innovative, or simply "belated." This presentation discusses methodological perspectives on the study of art and cultural expressions that do not fit within established narratives of what is considered "good" or "important" art. Suneson suggests ways of writing about art that co-produces knowledge with artists by centring oral history as a method for (re)articulating previously largely overlooked narratives about art’s histories. 

Doomsday in Krabstadt 

Jeuno JE Kim, visual artist and study leader of BFA Education, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts

Kim and Ewa Einhorn are an artist duo exploring myths related to "Norden." Their ongoing transmedia project, Krabstadt (2012-present), includes animated films, digital games, performances, sculptures, and an art school for weary teachers and students. Krabstadt is an Arctic city where Nordic countries send their unwanted people, flora, and fauna. Kim presents their latest film, "Green Noise.” As temperatures rise in Krabstadt, residents strive to meet Sustainable Growth Goals. However, plants go on strike, demanding degrowth policies and attacking human art.

When they go high, I go low

Mats Wikström, artist living in northern Sweden with an interest in art outside the conventional art infrastructure (the low art he considers the highest)

Wikström does not regard himself as a curator in the usual sense but has, alongside his own artistic practice, curated folk art at Havremagasinet in Boden, Luleå Art Hall, Norrbotten’s Museum, and “his own” Råneå Biennials and Råneå Art Hall. The starting point of this interest was an encounter with Julia Nylund’s work in the late 1990s: a Fjäll cattle calf and what later, when Wikström visited her in Markusvinsa in the Torne Valley, turned out to be a self-portrait. Wikström are drawn to art inspired by folk art expressions, such as that of Klara Kristalova and Björn Kjelltoft. This kind of (low) art might have informed his own practice, encouraging a greater sense of freedom in his artistic approach.

Tonje Haugland Sørensen & Ellen Suneson:

Concluding remarks