Welcome to Svalbard: Apichaya (Piya) Wanthiang

We are delighted to welcome Piya Wanthiang to Artica Svalbard for her residency, joining us as a 2026 resident nominated by Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum.

Piya is a Thai-Belgian artist based in Oslo whose practice spans painting and installation, often incorporating light, sound and text. Through immersive environments, her work explores how spaces influence perception, behaviour and interaction, engaging the body and multiple senses as ways of experiencing and understanding our surroundings.

Piya holds a BA from Sint-Lukas in Brussels and an MA in Fine Arts from Bergen Academy of Art and Design (KHiB). She has exhibited widely in Norway and internationally, including solo exhibitions at MUNCH in Oslo, Kristiansand Kunsthall and Storage in Bangkok. Alongside her artistic practice, she has taught at Trondheim Academy of Fine Art and the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design (KMD) in Bergen, and has served on the boards of LNM (Norwegian Painters Association) and UKS (The Young Artists’ Society).

During her residency at Artica, Piya will investigate how the Arctic’s changing light conditions affect the human body and the rhythms of daily life. Having grown up in rural Northeast Thailand, where patterns of work and rest closely followed natural light, Piya is interested in how people living in Svalbard adapt to the dramatic seasonal shifts between continuous daylight and darkness.

Working with video, photography and writing, she will observe and document the presence and absence of light and consider how these conditions shape everyday routines, sensory experience and our relationship with the surrounding environment.

We look forward to following Piya’s research during her time in Svalbard and sharing more about her work over the coming weeks.