Investigating Memory and Care in Svalbard: Thomas Abercromby in Residence

Artica Svalbard is pleased to welcome visual artist and curator Thomas Abercromby as our newest artist in residence. Abercromby will be in Longyearbyen until April.

Working across film, installation and socially engaged practice, Abercromby explores how art can create spaces for collective care and social imagination. A distinctive aspect of his work is the use of scent as a structural and critical medium, using olfactory experience to investigate themes of memory, class, queerness, abolition and environmental precarity. Through long-term collaborations with artists, gardeners, recovery communities, academics and activists, he develops multi-sensory installations that combine moving image, sound and composed scent.

During his residency in Svalbard, Abercromby will research the 2018 Maxim Popov incident in Longyearbyen, where a mental health crisis intersected with a rare bank robbery. Situating the event within broader conversations around mental health provision in the archipelago, the project will explore how care, justice and responsibility are understood within Svalbard’s socially and geopolitically distinct environment.

Through conversations with residents, workshops and site-responsive research, he will gather sound and scent materials that will inform the development of a new installation examining memory, mental health and collective care.

We look forward to following Thomas’s research and sharing updates from his time in residence.