At the Aurora examination hall at Umeå University, artist Thomas Hämén has used the shape of reindeer lichen and sculpted a giant lichen.
The title Stjärnlikt grenverk (Star-like branches) (2025) is a Swedish translation of the Latin name for reindeer lichen: Cladonia stellaris. With the sculpture, Thomas Hämén connects the history of the campus area with contemporary astronomy. Until Umeå University began construction in the 1960s, the area was reindeer grazing land for the Ran Sami village. The sculpture is structured as a map of the Laniakea Supercluster, consisting of hundreds of thousands of galaxies. Each flower in the lichen represents a galaxy cluster within Laniakea and the stems show the path of these clusters through the universe. In one of these flowers is our own galaxy, the Milky Way.
The sculpture, which is illuminated when darkness falls, consists of aluminium, ceramic and painted steel, and was produced by the Public Art Agency in collaboration with Akademiska Hus as part of the Art on Campus initiative.