Now in residence: Nora Adwan

We are pleased to welcome artist Nora Adwan to Artica Svalbard for a residency this summer.

Nora Adwan is an Irish–Palestinian artist based in Bergen. Her multidisciplinary practice explores how identity, memory and the body are shaped by displacement and exile, with a particular focus on female histories and perspectives. Drawing on multiple geographical contexts and lived experience, her work moves fluidly between poetry, fiction and documentary, weaving narratives that reflect on belonging, loss and the ways stories transform as they travel across languages and borders. Translation is both a method and a subject within her practice, revealing what is carried, altered and left behind in the movement between places.

During her residency at Artica Svalbard, Adwan will begin research for a new large-scale video installation that connects Svalbard's Arctic desert with desert landscapes elsewhere in the world. Through field recordings, moving images and conversations with people living in Longyearbyen, she will gather material that listens closely to the sounds, structures and lights of the Arctic environment while tracing the human presence within it. Workshops and dialogue with the local community will form an important part of this initial research, exploring how landscapes, geopolitics and histories intersect, and how relationships between bodies and territories resonate across distant geographies.

Nora Adwan has been nominated by Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum. We look forward to welcoming Nora to Svalbard and following the development of this new body of work over the coming months.