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.
Middleton’s work begins with field-based research and often unfolds through community workshops, interdisciplinary collaborations, and site-specific installations. In past works, she has used EEG brainwave activity, light, and sound frequencies to examine how body data might serve as a portal to other dimensions of nature. Her projects consider how bodies are assembled in, and through, the intra-connections of matter, molecule, and media, exploring the threshold between sensory awareness and scientific insight to reimagine how we make meaning of the world around us.
She was selected for the 2024 Arctic Circle Residency and is currently supported by the American-Scandinavian Foundation for a nine-month research project in Svalbard. She is also a finalist for the 2025 Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program and has recently received grants from NYSCA and Arts Mid-Hudson. Her work has been exhibited internationally and shaped through partnerships with scientists, technologists, and shamanic practitioners, supported by Arts Council England (UK), the European Spallation Source (Sweden), Stiftung Kunstfonds (Germany), and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (US).
During her residency at Artica Svalbard, Middleton will develop Reimagining Arctic Landscapes: Innovative Mapping for Embodied Ecological Awareness, a multidisciplinary research project supported by the American-Scandinavian Foundation. The work explores alternative methods for climate communication by integrating sonic, sensory, and spiritual dimensions into mapping practices. Drawing from cartographic archives, Arctic climate data, and community workshops, she will investigate how the body can become a site for ecological knowledge and map-making. This work will culminate in a series of public workshops and the development of a limited-edition oracle deck that translates embodied experiences of the Arctic landscape into visual and symbolic language.
www.amiddletonprojects.com
Instagram: @ashley.middleton_
Facebook: ashleyashashleya
Vimeo: vimeo.com/amiddletonprojects
Ashley’s residency is generously supported by the American-Scandinavian Foundation.
