Moa Sandström is a photographer, writer, researcher, and lecturer within the arts and humanities, and a collaborator with numerous environmentally, socially, and politically concerned, critical art projects. While ascribing to holistic and planetary, relational understandings of action and place, her engagement tends to take its point of departure in the Arctic realm, in the locality where she is based (the Swedish side of Sápmi/northern Sweden), and in Indigenous relations with and expressions of this land.
Sandström holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Sámi Dutkan/Sámi Studies from Umeå University (2021). In the PhD project, she worked together with contemporary Indigenous Sámi art practitioners from various fields, exploring how art/artivism may frame, engage, and ignite decolonising thinking and movements – particularly in Sámi settings, and in the relationship between Sápmi and Sweden.
Using photography and writing as her main means of professional communication, Sandström tends to base her work within interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral collaborations around some particular and mutual issue of concern. To name two such engagements, she is currently involved with:
a) a collaborative arts and science project exploring relationships with the forest and different approaches to forestry, involving Umeå University’s UmArts, Umeå School of Architecture, Umeå Institute of Design, Umeå Academy of Fine Arts, Sámi Studies, Political Sciences, and Bildmuseet (the university’s museum of contemporary art and visual culture), and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences; and
b) the organization Kullar & Klang, which functions as an arena for gathering artists and a wide range of knowledge bearers, visionaries, and innovators engaged in post-fossil, climate-neutral, sustainable society modeling in UNESCO’s Biosphere area of Vindelälven-Juhttátahkka.
Moa Sandström’s published works include:
Monumentets relevans(?) i ny samisk renässans (Statens konstråd, 2022);
Decolonising Artivism in Contemporary Sápmi (Umeå University, 2020);
Killinghopp (Provins, 2020);
DeCo2onising Artivism (h:ström, 2017).
