Museum report·Stockholm
Moderna Museet Gives Sami Sculptor Aage Gaup His Fullest Showing Yet
Moderna Museet in Stockholm has opened the most comprehensive exhibition to date of Aage Gaup, the Norwegian-Sami sculptor whose large wooden forms wove together international modernism and the Sami craft tradition of duodji. It runs from 7 November 2026 to 24 January 2027 and is tied to the Truth Commission for the Sami People.
Moderna Museet in Stockholm has opened the most comprehensive exhibition to date of Aage Gaup, the Norwegian-Sami sculptor whose large wooden forms wove together international modernism and the Sami craft tradition of duodji. Aage Gaup - Sculpting a Return / Habmet mahccama runs from 7 November 2026 to 24 January 2027, with an opening reception on 6 November.
Gaup was born in 1943 in Bissojohka, by the Porsangerfjord in Finnmark, but the forced evacuation of Finnmark late in the Second World War meant he grew up far from his family and Sami roots, in Verma in Romsdalen. He studied sculpture in Trondheim from 1973 to 1978, then moved to Maze in Finnmark and helped form the Maze Group, eight artists active from 1978 to 1983 who combined art with the struggle for Sami rights. In 1979 he helped found the Sami Artists Union, and from 1983 he lived and worked in Karasjok. He won the Hedda Award in 2000 and the John Savio Award in 2019, and died in 2021.
The exhibition brings together large-scale sculptures, installations, set-design models and maquettes for public art. Works include Dolos giella (2018), an installation drawing on the ancient visual language of the drum, and public commissions such as Almmiroidalas, or The Sky Path, for Tromso, and Luohti, or Joik, installed in Vadso in 1990. He was also the first set designer of Beaivvas, the Sami National Theatre, and the show includes his colourful stage models. Duodji, the Sami tradition in which usefulness and beauty are not separated, runs through the work: wood is treated as a material with grain, weight and smell, not as a neutral surface.
The show is connected to the Truth Commission for the Sami People, which presents its work in autumn 2026 as part of a joint programme involving eight institutions, including Moderna Museet in Stockholm and Malmo. Curators Lena Essling and Joa Ljungberg worked with an external advisory group of artists and researchers with Sami ties. A discussion titled Avant Joik takes place on 14 November, with guided tours in Swedish on 18, 21 and 25 November.
