Welcome to Jun Zhang and Yindi Chen

Yindi Chen (left) and Jun Zhang (right) on Longyearbreen glacier Photo: Carolyn Carmignac.

We are delighted to welcome Jun Zhang and Yindi Chen, the first OCA-nominated residents to join Artica Svalbard in 2026.

Working collaboratively across installation and publication, Zhang and Chen explore intersections between science and mythology, with a particular focus on more-than-human narratives. Rooted in ecofeminism, queer ecology, folk medicine and critical fabulation, their practice draws on multiple knowledge systems to question the construction of a homogeneous worldview.

Yindi Chen is a curator and writer whose research, informed by queer ecology, examines cultural representations of nature and speculates on entangled relationships between humans and more-than-human worlds. She has curated exhibitions at MACA Art Center in Beijing, Yamanaka Suplex in Osaka and Subtitled in New York, among others. Her writing has appeared in The Art Newspaper China, ArtReview, Cultbytes, C-print Journal and Whitehot Magazine. She is also co-founder of countercurrent, a publication dedicated to uncovering independent art spaces operating beyond the mainstream.

Jun Zhang describes his artistic practice as Imaginal Ethno-Cosmology, positioned at the intersection of comparative anthropology, speculative ethnography and cosmological reimagination. Drawing on myths, folklore and religious traditions from across different regions, his work engages with Indigenous cosmologies and alternative knowledge systems that have been suppressed or marginalised through colonialism and capitalist modernisation.

During their residency, Zhang and Chen will continue their research into the history of whaling and its connections to colonial cartography. Focusing on Smeerenburg, the 17th-century whaling settlement in northwest Svalbard, they will combine archival research with on-site exploration to investigate oceanic knowledge and histories marginalised by colonial activities.

Through this research, they will speculate on symbiotic scenes of Arctic more-than-human worlds, weaving together ecological, historical and mythological threads.

Welcome Jun and Yindi!