Dáiddadállu awarded this year’s MUNCH Award!
Dáiddadállu is receiving this year’s MUNCH Award for its work in building, strengthening, and developing Sámi art and artistic infrastructure. The award will be presented during a ceremony at MUNCH in Oslo on October 23, 2026.
The award represents significant recognition of Dáiddadállu’s importance as an artist-led network, a collaborative workspace, and a development arena for Sámi artists. Since its establishment in 2014, Dáiddadállu has developed an artistic infrastructure that creates structures, collaborations, and scope for action around Sámi artistic practices.
The network brings together artists across disciplines and generations, maintaining strong local roots in Sápmi while fostering artistic exchange both nationally and internationally.
Dáiddadállu's co-founder Máret Ánne Sara at Tate Modern Turbine Hall, 2025
Photo: DD
Built from the ground up
Founder Máret Ánne Sara views the award as recognition of an initiative that has grown from the ground up, rooted in the artists’ own needs, experiences, and challenges:
“Dáiddadállu emerged from the grassroots, built by artists because the infrastructure we needed as Sámi artists did not exist. Dáiddadállu is not just about building art, artistic practices, and an institution; it is also about building autonomy for a Sámi rationality within the established art field. Sámi art operates according to logics of knowledge that differ from the Western structures upon which the field is built. Our work paves the way for Sámi knowledge and logic to enter established art spaces and institutions.” "Systematic work towards intellectual and creative autonomy—in art, in institution-building, and in our engagement with the political and bureaucratic structures within which we operate—strengthens Sámi artists, Sámi art, and the society from which it emerges."
Managing director Dine Arnannguaq Fenger Lynge
Photo: Ken Are Bongo/DD
Important for Dáiddadállu
According to Dáiddadállu’s Managing director Dine Arnannguaq Fenger Lynge, the Munch award is an important recognition:
"We have worked hard for many years to build Dáiddadállu into what it is today. It has been about creating a platform and an infrastructure where Sámi artists can develop, work, collaborate, and engage with the world on their own terms. That is why this award means so much to us. It is a recognition of the work put in over many years, of the people who have built Dáiddadállu, and of the importance of having strong Sámi art institutions. At the same time, the award gives us the inspiration and drive to continue developing Dáiddadállu further."
Munch Čuorvvas!
Following the award, Dáiddadállu initiated Munch čuorvvas!, inviting artists and thinkers within the network to engage with Munch’s body of work from a contemporary Sámi perspective.
The project takes "the Munchian layer"—that nerve beneath the history and beneath the skin—as its starting point, opening up a space for dialogue, confrontation, and shared reflection between Munch’s inner landscapes and contemporary Sámi experiences. In this way, the project aligns with Dáiddadállu’s tradition of unlocking new possibilities for artistic development, intellectual inquiry, and forward momentum. Selected contributions will be presented during the award ceremony on October 23.
Jury statement:
The MUNCH Award Jury would like to honour Dáiddadállu for their significant work in supporting Indigenous artists, and for actively inserting Indigenous knowledge and perspectives into established art worlds.
Dáiddadállu is a Sámi artist network in Guovdageaidnu consisting of over 20 artist partners and an administration, representing art forms such as visual arts, film, dance, theatre, choreography, TV-production, performing arts, design, authorship, music and yoik. Dáiddadállu was established by artist/writer Máret Ánne Sara and choreographer/filmmaker Elle Sofe Sara in 2014 with Sámi epistemology at its core. Dáiddadállu operates as a network focused on creating and building infrastructures, which have been lacking for their practices. With an emphasis on solidarity and sustainability, they nurture the next generation at the same time as they honour their elders. Whilst fundamentally committed to their communities, they also challenge Sámi culture from within, always aiming to highlight and confront the status quo.
The jury: Wanda Nanibush, Yvette Mutumba, Cosmin Costinaș, Tone Hansen, and Tominga O’Donnell.
Press photos / Preassa govat: CREDD DÁIDDADÁLLU
