Jimena Bigá and Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen
University of Helsinki
Paint, Weave, Sing, Exist: Indigenous Knowledges as Living Art
Indigenous art is a profound manifestation of knowledges, identities, and cultural resilience. Unlike the Western notion of arts as individual achievement or commodified object, Indigenous arts is contextualized with collective and individual ways of knowing and practices that interweaves memories, continuous storying, and diverse beings in visible and invisible worlds. Indigenous artistic expressions—whether featherwork, ceramics, weaving, music, body painting, storying, or design are often complementary and carry out aesthetic, values, environmental, and technical knowledge that extends far beyond conventional definitions of “art”. What cannot be storied and expressed in words, may be expressed in sounds and geometric patterns among others. In this text, we take examples from Amazonian and Arctic contexts. In both contexts, the art practices, deeply embedded in daily and ritual life, express relationships between humans, the environment, and more-than-human entities, embody a living dialogue between past, present, and future, and affirming continuous contemporary creation. They serve as a mechanism of communication, literacy, survival and transformation.
Expressions of Social Worlds
The connection between myth, memory, and the environment is central to diverse in Indigenous art expressions (Severi and Lagrou 2013). This is evident among others, in Amazonian geometric arts, present from precolonial earthworks to contemporary body and face paintings (Virtanen and Saunaluoma 2017). The materials used in creating body paint commonly include genipap, annatto, charcoal, and white clay.
Patterned designs hold a powerful agency, revealing connections between different realms of social reality. Geometric designs are often closely related to oral histories, ritual knowledge, and songs. Different peoples have their specific geometric repertoires with specific aesthetics, while also different genders, contexts, ages, and so forth are identified with their own patterns. Patterns express relations, symmetries relations and subtle asymmetries that bring movement and transformation. Designs mark life stages (e.g., childhood, fertility, hunting) and gender, and provide protection, strength, and spiritual alignment. Whether finely painted with genipap or broadly drawn with maize, their function is always active—to guide, transform, and relate across worlds (Lagrou 2009; 2022).
Among Kaxinawa (Huni Kuin), geometric designs known as kene are not decorative but powerful visual languages embedded with spirit and transformations. Created primarily by women, kene are guarded carefully, with limited verbal explanation, reflecting the belief that true knowledge requires proper context and initiation. Designs are present across many surfaces—body, textiles, ceramics, baskets—and act as mediators between the human and spiritual worlds. They do not represent beings; rather, they connect to them. (Lagrou 2022).
The use of graphism and their knowledge extends to baskets, ceramics, and textiles. These designs, embedded in the artwork, link the person with ancestral relations, memories and acts in ritual contexts. By regenerating graphisms, historical and cultural memory of ancestors is reproduced, creating and communicating social worlds and traditions. The face and body paintings do more than beautify the body—they express the intrinsic relationship between the person, the community, and the cosmos. The graphisms embed the idea everything is interconnected and capable of transformation (Lagrou 2022). Graphisms are visual language interconnecting worlds: material and immaterial, human and non-human, such as taowás of the Karão Jaguaribaras, which bridge the material and spiritual worlds. The taowás, as these visual expressions are called, allow one to inhabit different dimensions of being and territory at once. These expressions are not static or frozen in time, but deeply responsive to ongoing environment, politics, and economics. This way of knowing and knowledge is not available to just anyone: only those who practice the art are authorized to handle and prepare the natural dyes, as their use implies spiritual responsibility. (Karão Jaguaribaras and Santos Lopes 2021).
Crafting and Caring
Craftwork, or duodji in Sami context, is not merely a technique or a craft. Duodji is part of the body and the landscape. For reindeer herder communities, duodji transmits not only technical skills but also ways of understanding the environment, landscapes, the rhythms of the climate, the behavior of animals, and the respectful use of natural resources that are closely connected to reindeer herding. has been a natural part of everyday life since childhood. (Magga, 2024; Magga 2022).
Duodji is more than art or craftwork. Among others, gákti, traditional Sámi clothing, carries deep cultural and regional meaning through its structure and design. Elements like vadjanmálle (cut pattern) and hervenmáhttu (shared community skill) reflect local duodji knowledge, linking individuals to kin, land, and tradition (Magga 2024). Decorative elements—sealgehearvvat (back), doareshearvvat (off-centre), and guovttebealdilli (sides)—express Sámi aesthetics and mark occasions like family ceremonies or artistic practice. While artistic duodji involves experimentation and planning, it remains rooted in identity, with materials like reindeer skin and natural dyes. Gákti is more than clothing—it is skin that embodies Sámi heritage, connecting people across families, places, and generations. This is echoed in the Sámi word ávnnastit, meaning to transform matter in relation to life, highlighting duodji as a living link to ancestral way of knowing.
The intimate relationships embedded in Sámi craftwork are present in komsio, a ceremonial cradle, which serves as both a protective space and a symbol of the infant’s role as a recipient of care and protection within the community (Magga 2024). Its creation begins well before the child’s birth, but it is not completed until after the birth. This process involves careful preparation, including the inclusion of protective elements like the šiella, a silver amulet believed to ward off evil spirits and ensure the child’s safety. Traditionally, the komsio is also symbolic of the connection between the child and their family, community, and region, with a spiritual and cultural depth embedded in the duodji tradition. In the past, when a newborn was placed in the komsio, it was blessed as part of a ritual that connected the child to the divine and community protection. The komsio and the gákti-tradition practices emphasize the symbolic and protective role of objects in nurturing new life and culture. The presence of the šiella in the komsio further solidifies the sacred nature of the child’s initiation into the world. This cultural practice, when there is a loss of a child is called by Magga (2024) “Angel Child’s Komsio,” sparked the soulful aspects of duodji, highlighting its spiritual and protective functions within Sámi life. A crafted object is not a product—it is a connection. It is body, history, cosmology woven, painted, or carved into matter. Through these knowledges, it is possible to connect worlds, to hold the invisible, and to reaffirm that memory lives in the hands that create.
Living Memory and Relation with the World through Voice
Several Indigenous musical performative arts are living, dynamic forms of communication that hold deep cultural, historical, and emotional significance. These art forms are not just songs or performances but ways of embodying, remembering, and connecting with people, beings, and the cosmos.
This is evident in Amazonian musical traditions (Hill 1993) as well as in the Arctic. Sámi musical practices, including joik, leu′dd, and luohti, are much more than an aesthetic. They are vocal traditions where the performer does not merely describe a subject—whether it be a person, animal, or landscape—but evokes its very essence and presence. Each region has its own distinct style, influenced by dialects and local livelihoods, but joik always carries the personal and relational connection between the performer and the subject. Joik is deeply personal and cannot be performed about someone or something—it is performed for them, as a dedication or homage, conveying a complete picture of the subject. This makes joik more than music; it is a way of being and relating. Joik follows a unique use of voice, incorporating variations, decorations, and improvisations, with the joiker able to adapt the performance through phrases and syllables (dajahusat). (Jouste 2017).
Skolt Sámi singers are careful not to perform leu′dd when the person or subject of the song is present, to avoid possible disrespect or insult. This highlights the sacred, deeply personal nature of leu′dd. Skolt Sámi leu′dd tells specific life stories, often recounting births, losses, and journeys, serving as oral histories passed down through generations. This tradition is not merely an aesthetic act but an archival practice, preserving collective memory and connecting present generations to their ancestors. Leu′dd is not performed on abstract subjects; instead, it deals directly with real people and events, offering an intimate, local perspective on Skolt Sámi history . Although both traditions share a commitment to remembering and relating, they differ in form and function. Joik is abstract, evoking the essence of a subject, while leu′dd is concrete, recounting specific events or people. Additionally, joik is a shared communal experience, passed across generations, while leu′dd functions as an individual expression deeply rooted in the local context. (Jouste 2017.)
Both joik and leu′dd are more than performances—they are acts of living memory, intertwined with Sámi cosmology, kinship, and connection to the land. Contemporary Sámi artists continue to evolve these traditions, blending them with new genres like jazz or metal, but at their core, these expressions remain powerful tools for cultural survival and identity. Through these traditions, Sámi performers connect with their past, present, and future, ensuring that memory and cultural knowledge can be preserved, embodied, and passed on in sound and voice. As Sámi musician Näkkäläjärvi-Länsman (2024) explains, these performative acts are not mere entertainment—they are essential expressions of being, knowing, and remembering, enacting relationships with the world around them, from people to animals to the very earth.
Conclusion
Indigenous art expressions closely related to the land and the social relations expressed in diverse sounds and visual practices. As language is linked to the land (Basso 1996), diverse forms of arts link to the places lived and being lived. Through these practices, Indigenous peoples live and connect to the place, their beings, myths, stories, and knowledges into multiple cultural acts, merging in what is called arts. They make different senses for those who have lived in the land and participate in ancestral relations. They work as a literacy of history, social relations, and land-based knowing. The Western framework, with its focus on individual expression and market-driven value, has historically marginalized Indigenous art by relegating it to ethnographic museums or “primitive” collections (Magga, S-M., 2022). Indigenous art is ancestral and contemporary, emerging from the diverse cultural matrices of different nations and experiences. The general label “Indigenous art” is also questionable. As Ailton Krenak asserts, Indigenous arts cannot be framed or contained, as it reflects an ongoing connection between past, present, and future.
Rather than being fixed in time, Indigenous art reflects living traditions, constantly adapting to new contexts. Contemporary Indigenous artists, as demonstrated in exhibitions that blend ancestral practices with modern expressions, show that art is not confined to any one period but is an ongoing act of cultural expression and transformation. This shift challenges Western art institutions to reconsider their narrow definitions and embrace a more inclusive understanding of what constitutes “art”. Indigenous arts are also deeply woven into rituals, daily practices, and communal relationships. It challenges the colonial frameworks that have long attempted to silence or marginalize certain voices.
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