Ekaterina Sharova, M.A.

What’s the work that you do?

I started the Arctic Art Forum, which has been a place for reclaiming history and identity since 2016. I was born and raised in the North myself. I have also worked as a curator, artistic project manager and educator internationally for more than twenty years.

I am currently a Doctoral researcher at the University of Lapland. I am interested in how design and art practices can produce knowledge. My PhD focuses on how knowledge and meaning are produced through design and art, and how this relates to questions of power and representation, with focus on the High North and Indigenous and local communities.

What keeps you going?

Arctic history is something I own and embody. I came to Tromsø as an exchange student to study literature in 2004 and was trained later as an art historian at the University of Oslo. Having this interdisciplinary background, I am especially interested in the role that visual and material archives play in storytelling. There are many knowledge gaps between different geographies and disciplines. I use an interdisciplinary approach in order to rediscover indigenous and local knowledge which has been hidden by colonial powers and contribute to a polyphonic storytelling in the history of culture.

What’s your message to the world?
Knowledge is constructed by people who have power. As history shows, most of them have been men. In the light of climate change and conflicts, art and culture become an important arena for knowledge production in the North. We could listen more to the stories of indigenous people, show respect to animals and nature.