Sculptor, set designer, and political activist Aage Gaup is a central figure in Sámi and Norwegian art. After training at the Trondheim Academy of Fine Art in southern Norway, Gaup took on a commission for a primary school in Láhpoluoppal in northern Norway, moving to the nearby town of Máze. In 1978, a group of eight Sámi artists, including Gaup, founded the Máze Group whose home in the small town served as the base for many activists taking part in protests against the construction of a nearby dam on the Alta River. Eventually known as the “Alta Action,” the first Indigenous uprising in Europe, the protests would serve as a turning point in the movement for political and cultural representation for Indigenous people across Sápmi, the Sámi homeland, which encompasses parts of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and north-western Russia. The Milk of Dreams features Gaup’s work Sculpture I & II (1979), which resembles a wave suspended in mid-air. A painted blue stripe at the bottom, yellow in the middle, and orange on top suggest a river with its bank and perhaps the sky or sunrise above it. The artist also described the work in musical terms, as a reference to the structure of the Sámi joik.
Melanie Kress
