Girjegumpi: The Sámi Architecture Library
Book launch with Joar Nango and Axel Wieder
On the occasion of the publication of an extensive survey of his work, Sámi architect and artist Joar Nango will discuss his approach to architecture after the end of capitalism and building with indigenous traditions, in conversation with editor Axel Wieder. Centering on a notion of nomadic space, the publication offers the first in-depth overview of Nango's projects, photo archives, and investigations of Sámi architecture, including essays and conversations with long-time collaborators and discussion partners.
Conceived as platforms that consciously create autonomous spaces in which Sámi and indigenous cultures can grow, Nango's projects seek encounters and open processes, developing new forms of expression and alliance with non-Sámi contexts. Often developed in collaboration with practitioners from a range of fields including architecture, art, theory, and crafts, Nango's practice operates between institutional and public spaces.
Featured projects include ongoing discursive social platforms such as the mobile Sámi architecture library Girjegumpi, a series of films and conversations titled Post-Capitalist Architecture TV, image archives documenting contemporary expressions of Sámi architectural principles in Northern Scandinavia and beyond, and European Everything, first presented at documenta 14, for which Nango traveled by van along the borders of Europe from his home in Tromsø, Northern Norway to Athens in Greece, mapping the fringe and the excluded of this political and cultural terrain.
Joar Nango is an artist and architect. His projects explore the boundaries between architecture, design, and visual art as an investigation of Indigenous space. He was trained at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, the Bergen School of Architecture and Weissensee Kunsthochschule in Berlin. He is a founding member of the architecture collective FFB and is currently setting up a nordic network of Sámi architects. Nango has exhibited extensively internationally, including at documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel, Nasjonalmuseet Oslo, Kiasma—Museum of Contemporary Art Helsinki, the Toronto Biennial of Art and Bergen Kunsthall. In 2023, he presented a solo exhibition in the Nordic Pavilion at the Venice Biennial of Architecture.
Joar Nango
Girjegumpi: The Sámi Architecture Library
With contributions by Mathias Danbolt, Candice Hopkins, Tone Huse, Joar Nango, Vivi Noahsen, Taqralik Partridge, Sofia Singler, Sigbjørn Skåden, Axel Wieder
Sternberg Press / Bergen Kunsthall, 2026
