Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing

Film

Born 1995 in Murmansk, Russia
Lives in Espoo, Finland, and Njuorggán, Sápmi

Lada Suomenrinne’s work spans film, photography, and poetry and focuses on the connection between their Sámi cultural identity and the environmental transformations caused by global warming. In the 2018 black-and-white film Mun&Don (You&Me), Suomenrinne follows a single figure in a winter landscape, as Niki Rasmus’s piano score in the background intertwines with the sounds of wind. Conveying the literal and metaphorical relevance of snow in the lives of Indigenous peoples in the circumpolar regions, Mun&Don connects living beings to their physical geography and asserts their place of cultural belonging. In Я неба (me the sky) (2022), Suomenrinne captures the wilderness from behind a moving vehicle's glass window, sweeping the camera over towering treetops before angling it skyward, where the sun beams directly into the lens. The depiction of the sky is especially meaningful, at once serving as a crucial point of reference to the broader natural world and giving Suomenrinne a chance to anticipate impending weather conditions at the end of the world.