Katie Paterson’s True North: A Portrait of Arctic Light
Katie Paterson in Svalbard, photo: Tom Warner for STAR SPHERE / Sony
Artica Svalbard is pleased to share a new interview film featuring renowned artist Katie Paterson, created during her residency in Svalbard in 2025. The film offers a behind-the-scenes look at her recent project, True North — a photographic work developed using sunlight reflected off Arctic glaciers and satellite imagery captured from space.
Paterson is known for artworks that explore the vastness of the universe and its connection to Earth — often working with subjects like dying stars, lunar transmissions, and cosmic dust. In True North, she brings this cosmic perspective down to a fragile, rapidly transforming part of our world: the Arctic.
Using Sony’s nanosatellite camera “EYE”, part of the STAR SPHERE initiative, Paterson captured images of the Arctic from orbit — photographing Greenland, the Canadian Arctic, and Svalbard. At the same time, she travelled to Svalbard during the 2025 summer solstice, when the midnight sun illuminates the ice around the clock.
There, she collected sunlight reflected off glaciers using photovoltaic panels. This solar energy was stored and later used to develop the satellite photographs — embedding the Arctic’s own light into the prints. The resulting work is both a record and a residue: a landscape made from the very light it reflects.
“I travelled to the Arctic with a solar battery, and while I was there, I collected the light that was shining and bouncing off the glaciers. I stored that energy and used it to develop the photographs. So in a way, the photos are made of Arctic light. When you look at them, you’re seeing a record of that moment in time, but the images are also infused with the polar light as it was then. And perhaps, in a millennium or even sooner, that light may no longer exist in the same way.” Paterson explains.
This convergence of satellite imaging, solar energy, and Arctic landscape results in a work that exists at the intersection of science, imagination, and environmental urgency. As Paterson notes, the photographs may last longer than the glaciers themselves — capturing a light that may not exist in the same form in generations to come.
Watch the interview film, here:
Created during the artist’s 2025 residency with Artica Svalbard. Developed using nanosatellite imagery and solar energy collected in Svalbard. The project supported in collaboration with STAR SPHERE / Sony.
Read more about the project here.
Artica Svalbard supports artists whose work explores complex questions about our environment, culture, and planetary future. True North exemplifies the kind of interdisciplinary, research-based practice Artica is committed to supporting — where poetic expression, scientific process, and place-based experience converge to reflect the world we share.