Marja Helander’s video works Trambo (2014) and Dolastallat – To have a campfire (2016) (featured image) are part of the group exhibition I converse with fire at the North Norwegian Art Centre in Svolvær, Norway. The exhibition is on view from June 7th to September 28th, 2025.

I converse with fire is the first group exhibition in a broader collaboration with independent curator Vanina Saracino, under the title Solar Kin. I converse with fire references a verse by Sámi artist and poet Nils-Aslak Valkeapää. It evokes a worldview where fire is not a tool, but a kin, forming part of broader practices of care, land stewardship, and more-than-human responsibility that rekindle the act of burning to its ancestral, Indigenous roots – particularly those in Sápmi, a region across what is now called northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and parts of Russia.

Marja Helander (b.1965) is a Finnish photographic and video artist. She graduated from the University of Art and Design in Helsinki in 1999. Her earlier work explored her own identity between the Finnish and the Sámi culture. Helander’s recent photographic work has focused on Northern landscape. The accent of the work is on the postcolonial topics in the Sámi area, focusing particularly on the global mining industry. The encounter between nature and mankind is not harmonious, but destructive. On the other hand, her video works are playful, exploring the contradiction between the traditional Sámi way of life and the modern society. Her recent short film Birds in the Earth won the Risto Jarva Prize and the main prize of the National Competition at Tampere Film Festival 2018. Marja Helander has participated in solo and group exhibitions and her works have been acquired for various public collections in Finland and abroad.

I converse with fire
North Norwegian Art Centre
June 7–September 28, 2025
Svolvær, Norway

More information: North Norwegian Art Centre: I converse with fire

AV-arkki has promoted and distributed Finnish media art since 1989. AV-arkki’s promotional efforts have made the artists’ participation in this event possible. If you want to hear the latest news from our distribution, subscribe to our newsletter!