Artica Svalbard is pleased to welcome Dina Brode-Roger, PhD and Research Fellow in Cultural Studies at KU Leuven, Belgium, Kristine Fornes, Norwegian artist working primarily with textiles, dyeing and embroidery, and Lina Machida, based in Tokyo working with moving images, animation, drawing and spatial installation accompanied by photograh and collaborator Gen Ichikawa.
Dina Brode-Roger returns to Longyearbyen, her previous home, to explore the everyday history of Longyearbyen through tableware and domestic objects that hold memories of life in the settlement. Shifting focus from the mining and industrial narratives often associated with mono-company towns, her project highlights the everyday experiences of residents through archival research, historical photographs, and images and stories shared by current and former residents. In collaboration with Svalbard Museum, she will trace how domestic and dining practices have evolved over time, using ordinary objects as a starting point for remembering and sharing personal histories.
During her residency Lina Machida will begin a new project that explores bodily resistance and adaptation in extreme cold. Starting from the act of drawing with numbed fingers, she will create marks shaped by friction with the environment rather than intention—treating these traces as records of contact between body and climate. Observing subtle rhythms of light, wind, snow, architecture, and non-human life, she will develop moving-image work that emerges through sensory encounter rather than narrative construction. The residency will also include experimental printmaking, exploring how incised lines can register time, motion, and environmental conditions. Together, these processes form an inquiry into reciprocity between body and landscape, where animation becomes a trace of having encountered—and stayed with—the Arctic environment. Lina Machida is accompanied by collaborator and photographer Gen Ichikawa.
Kristine Fornes’ practice explores the cultural and historical meanings of textiles through craftsmanship, material traditions and their connections to nature and contemporary life. During her residency at Artica Svalbard, she will experiment with spinning, knitting, drawing and printing, working with wool, linen, silk, rose fibre and cotton. Her research will include time with the cultural-historical collections at Svalbard Museum, she will study archaeological textile finds, photographs and archival material to explore how historical craftsmanship and visual languages can inform new work. Returning to Svalbard, where she was born, also offers an opportunity to engage with a different landscape and context, considering how new surroundings can shape creative processes and artistic outcomes.
Dina Brode-Roger, Lina Machida and Kristine Fornes bring three distinct artistic approaches to material, memory and the environment, each offering new perspectives on life in the Arctic. We look forward to following their explorations and seeing how their time at Artica Svalbard will shape their work.