Britta Marakatt-Labba was born in 1951 and grew up in a reindeer herding family in the Saarivuoma Sámi village. She began her artistic career in 1979 after completing her studies at the school of Design and Crafts in Gothenburg. Early on, she and other newly educated Sámi artists worked to build and establish a Sámi artists' organisation.

Today, Britta lives and works in Övre Soppero and has been an active artist for over 40 years. Her major international breakthrough came in 2017 when her twenty-four metres long embroidery Historja was shown at the contemporary art exhibition Documenta 14. In March 2025, Artnews named the embroidery as one of the 100 best artworks of the 21st century. The embroidery was awarded 35th place. Her life and artistry were portrayed in the film Historjá – Stitching for Sápmi (2022).

For her art and artistic accomplishments, she has received several awards and cultural prizes, including the Gannevik Scholarship (2015), the Illis Quorum (2017), the Stig Dagerman Prize (2019), the Prince Eugen Medal (2020) and the Hazelius Medal in Gold (2024). In 2022, she was portrayed by Maja Helander for the annual honorary portrait in the Swedish National Portrait Collection. In the same year, she was appointed honorary doctor at the University of Bergen and participated in the main exhibition of the Venice Biennale, The Milk of Dreams.

In 2024, her major retrospective, Sylkvasse stygn, was presented at the National Museum in Oslo. In March 2025, the exhibition was awarded the Norwegian Art Critics’ Prize for 2024. In October 2024, the exhibition continued to the KIN Museum in Kiruna, where it was displayed until March 2025. It will be shown at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm from June 14 to November 9, 2025, and will then continue to Kunsthalle Mainz in the spring of 2026.