Per Asle Sara is the head of the Sámi Dáiddamagasiidna – RiddoDuottarMuseat department. He has a strong professional interest in how art can function as an expression of identity, belonging and resistance, especially within visual art in a Sámi context. He is particularly interested in how visual expressions can contribute to increased awareness of social and political issues, with a special focus on Sámi, political contemporary art.
Per holds a master’s degree in art history from UiT The Arctic University of Norway. Through work in museums, exhibitions and various projects, he has years of experience as an advisor, panelist, mediator, writer of art communication texts, editor, spokesperson, co-curator and exhibition organizer. Among other projects, he has worked as co-curator for the exhibition Visualizing Arctic Voices at the Center for Northern Peoples, translated the associated exhibition catalog into Northern Sámi, and served as advisor and text contributor for The Land Has a Mind to Speak and Sámi Horizons at MARKK in Hamburg. Recently, he has organized the Sami Parliament’s purchasing exhibition Áigegovat in collaboration with the Sami Parliament’s purchasing committee and Sámi Dáiddaguovddáš.
Per Asle grew up in Kárášjohka and comes from a Sámi reindeer herding family. He also has an art education from the Karasjok Art School, where he was among the first cohort of students. In addition to his role as department head, he also works as an illustrative artist.
Contact:
per.asle@rdm.no
+47 408 59 401
Ulrikke Marie Strandli is a collections manager at the Sámi Dáiddamagasiidna – RiddoDuottarMuseat. Her areas of interest include how duodji and dáidda can provide new and expanded perspectives on Sámi history, culture, and society, as well as strengthen identity and cohesion in Sápmi over time.
Ulrikke holds a master’s degree in art history from UiT The Arctic University of Norway. In her master’s project, she worked with coastal Sámi cultural heritage and examined how museums and collections have contributed to shaping knowledge and narratives about Sámi communities. This has given her a particular awareness of the importance of insider perspectives in the management and dissemination of Sámi art and culture. Through her studies and project work, she has gained experience in exhibition development and the communication of Indigenous art. She is affiliated with the research group Arctic Voices and has contributed to the exhibitions Visualizing Arctic Voices at the Dávvi Álbmogiid Guovddáš / Centre for Northern Peoples, and Stories from the Arctic Contact Zone, which was shown at the Arctic Youth Conference in 2025.
Ulrikke was born and raised in Romsa / Tromsø, with a coastal Sámi background and a strong connection to Skárfvággi / Skardalen in Gáivuotna / Kåfjord and Ákšovuotna / Oksfjord in Ráisa / Nordreisa in Northern Troms.
Contact:
ulrikke@rdm.no
+47 462 83 213
Pablo N. Barrera joins RiddoDuottarMuseat as the inaugural curator of the Sámi Dáiddamagasiidna /Sámi Art Collections Department. Pablo brings over fifteen years of experience collaborating with local art communities to produce exhibitions and apply innovative strategies supporting formal and informal learning of Indigenous art. His research focuses on Indigenous artists operating within the context of global Indigenous movements and colonial organizational structures. He is committed to mentoring the next generation of Indigenous curators and to raising public awareness of the invaluable role that Indigenous artistic perspectives contribute toward globalizing art history.
Pablo holds master’s degrees in art history from Yale University and Harvard University, and a bachelor’s degree in the History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to arriving in Sápmi, he served as Associate Curator at Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center, where he organized over 40 exhibitions in a region representing 38 federally recognized tribal nations, curating major solo, group, retrospective, survey, and public art exhibitions. In addition to his professional experience in the museum and heritage sectors, Pablo has juried international survey exhibitions, given lectures and presentations across three continents, and been invited as guest curator for landmark exhibitions in the Southwestern United States region. He has also independently curated shows in London, Seoul, and New York, and held research and advisory committee positions for institutions including the Fulbright Fellowship, the Getty Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and various artist-in-residence programs.
Pablo has written on the artistic representation of cultures that experienced colonization, including exhibition catalogue essays, a paper on Mesoamerican art production as part of the Columbian Exchange between Colonial Spain and East Asia (National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institute) and a co-authored chapter on Korean vernacular architectural heritage (Springer International). He was born in Chicago to immigrant parents; his father is a member of a Wixáritari Indigenous community in Jalisco, Mexico, where Pablo spent his formative years.
Contact:
pablo@rdm.no