CURRENT RESIDENTS
Nastassja Simensky
In residence: September - October 2025
Nastassja Simensky returns to Artica Svalbard following her 2024 residency, which was supported through a nomination by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) and her independently funded residency earlier this year. Her ongoing work explores the unevenly distributed impacts of global energy regimes and extractive processes on particular geographies over time, using fieldwork as a central method.
Janos Nieminen
In residence: September 2025
Janos Nieminen is a data scientist with a background in mathematics and theoretical philosophy, currently pursuing a PhD in philosophy with a focus on counterfactual reasoning. With 15 years of experience as a software developer, Nieminen bridges technical expertise with a deep philosophical inquiry into the political and symbolic dimensions of state presence in fragile environments. He is also working on a non-fiction book about Svalbard, which examines how countries like Russia and China maintain influence in the Arctic through architecture, infrastructure, and everyday routines.
Ashley Middleton
In residence: August 2025 – April 2026
Ashley Middleton is an artist and researcher whose work explores the evolving relationship between the body, technology, and the environment. Working across installation, sound, video, and photography, she creates immersive experiences that integrate scientific inquiry with sensory perception. Guided by rhizomatic methodologies, embodiment practices, and a feminist phenomenological perspective, her projects investigate how attention, ritual, and intuitive knowledge shape ecological awareness.
Simon Daniel Tegnander Wenzel
In residence: August - September 2025
Simon Daniel Tegnander Wenzel works with performance, scent, moving image, sound, and installation. Driven by curiosity and a desire for learning through tacit knowledge, he looks for traces of past traditions and alternative technologies displaced in the present.
Bianca Hisse and Christian Danielewitz
In residence: August - October 2025
Christian Danielewitz, a Danish visual artist, researcher, and writer, and Bianca Hisse, a Brazilian visual artist and choreographer, come together as a collaborative duo whose work spans across multiple disciplines. Their practices focus on geopolitical issues, the extraction of raw materials, digital materialities, and how spaces are choreographed by economic and social forces. Their collective approach combines visual art, research, and performance to critically engage with urgent global and environmental concerns.