I SAW YOU by Carola Grahn

Originally created in 2016, the work takes the form of a love letter placed in unexpected everyday locations: gas stations, roadsides, and transient public spaces. In Umeå, the text will appear on a monumental wall installation in the city centre, across selected petrol stations and in physical letters given to the Arctic Art Summit participants. A Dodge van is also specially decorated by the artist as a moving extension of the work itself.

Blending intimacy, humour, melancholy, and sharp social observation, I SAW YOU reflects on belonging, mobility, class, desire, and the emotional geography of the North. Addressed to an unnamed former lover encountered at a gas station, the text unfolds as a meditation on two fundamentally different relationships to place: one person who could never leave, and another who could never stay.

By bringing this vulnerable and cinematic narrative into public space, Grahn challenges conventional ideas of where art belongs — and who it speaks to. The work moves between contemporary art, roadside culture, Sámi experience, and northern everyday life, inviting audiences to encounter art not only in institutions, but in the ordinary spaces people pass through every day.

About the Artist:

Carola Grahn is a South Sámi artist from Jåhkåmåhkke/Jokkmokk and holds a Master’s degree from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. Through her artistic practice, she critically examines humanity’s alienation from nature and the destructive legacy of colonialism, which continues to cause suffering for both people and the environment. In her work, she weaves together references from Western art history and popular culture with Sámi traditions and the rural landscapes of northern Sweden—often with a dark underlying humour.

Pthocredit: Erika Evensson