Exhibition Space

Ruben Mardulier (Belgium) and Mimi Wascher (Austria/Belgium) will present their works at the Spitsbergen Artists Center.
Meditations on blue
Mimi will present a performative installation. The work is part of her ongoing project BLUE - States of Matter // Nuances of Truth and explores the color blue as a space to escape into from binary thinking, outdated realities and from shape all together. The artist asks herself what kind of relationship she can have with a color - can it be a friend, can it offer solutions, can she envy it or can it envy her? Inspired by Maggie Nelson’s book “Bluets” and the Svalbard phenomenon of the “blue days” Mimi invites you to enter her installation, explore it and let this mysterious color give you whatever it may be that you need that day.
Ruben Mardulier (1993) is a Belgian multimedia artist with a background in contemporary circus. The works he will present at the Spitsbergen Artists Center are the result of naive, often humorous associations upon his surroundings. Here at Longyearbyen, Mardulier found inspiration in both the mandatory reflective vests and the absence of the sun.
Thank you to The Goethe Institute for their support, to the Austrian Embassy in Oslo for co-hosting the event, and a special thank you to Mara Rosmann who has been our guide and helping hand here on Svalbard

The Svalbard Guide Association, in cooperation with the Spitsbergen Artists Center are proud to present:Michael Laugherty, amateur astronomer, and landscape and astrophotographer. While rewarding, astrophotography can be a challenge for beginners, leading to feelings of frustration. This session will introduce astrophotography to the complete beginner, and talk about how to photograph the night sky using only the capabilities of an everyday smartphone. You will come away with information on how to locate dark sky sites and avoid light pollution, where to learn the basics about celestial objects, understanding the camera settings on a smartphone, and the basic techniques to get you started.

French art stsMarielle Guille presents
EcoArtVenturière (in french), or EcoArtVenturer in english.
This idea is about women having a strong ecological consciousness, practicing art and loving nature. Women who are sensitive and smart, and feel open to the world with all their senses, able to choose a different path, not afraid of being in nature, and having a deep relationship with it.
Program:
Words for Ecology, Art and Adventure
In her backpack, the EcoArtVenturer has ...
Letters, we will create answers together
Output: The answers will be sent to each person who asked a question. The entire work will be sent to all participants of the workshop. It could become a future art installation.
Marielle is in residence at Spitsbergen Artists Center and her project is supported by Creative Europe and the Giethe Institute.

21 April Work-in-progress exhibition with artists-in-residence Pat Barker from Canada presenting abstractions of the Arctic landscape rendered with cold wax technique, Jo Haskins from England/France who continues her ongoing experimentation with the forms found in the Arctic, Evert Tito from Peru/France who will play traditional Peruvian music from the Andes on flute, and Elisabeth Jarstø from Norway who will create an video and art installation experimenting with the forms and transformations found on Svalbard.

Work-in-progress-utstilling med artister-in-residence Pat Barker fra Canada som presenterer abstraksjoner av det arktiske landskapet gjengitt med kaldvoksteknikk, Jo Haskins fra England/Frankrike som fortsetter sin pågående eksperimentering med formene som finnes i Arktis, Evert Tito fra Peru/Frankrike som skal spille tradisjonell peruansk musikk fra Andesfjellene på fløyte, og Elisabeth Jarstø fra Norge som skal lage en video- og kunstinstallasjon som eksperimenterer med formene og transformasjonene som finnes på Svalbard.

30 March Join award winning polar photographer Joshua Holko for an hour of amazing photographs and tips on wildlife photography.Joshua find remote and other-worldly landscapes to be his passion. Drawn to sweeping and rugged landscapes, he is in his element. In the wilderness. Josh searches for the pristine in nature: solitariness, peace, tranquility, and the grandeur that comes from the pure, unspoilt, often threatening and sometimes beautiful, but always dramatic and powerful natural world

18 March Join artist Kirsty Banks for a fun and creative weaving workshop, using materials you can find in the home. Using a simple card loom, make a woven piece of Art for your wall. There will be some materials provided, but please feel free to bring some wool, old fabric or plastic bags, which can be cut into strips and added to your piece.

3 March Inspired by logbooks from past polar expeditions, the idea is to write down the things you did today, or yesterday, or last week, as crazy or trivial as the events might be. It can be a dry summary of your day, a diary-like entry or even a drawing. Whatever colours your world!
The ‘logs’ will be part of the project Only Barely Still, tha

21 February Norwegian artist Louise Rapley will show her work in progress, "Algid Sentry" showing the development of Arctic Ice in macro and micro. Dutch artist Marieke ten Berge will show studies and discuss her process for her upcoming picture book on the beauty of the Arctic.escription goes here

American artist and professor of art, Adam Fung, will be exhibiting 14 surrealist oil paintings on copper at the Spitsbergen Artists Center from 7 June to 24 June. The work presents possibilities and images, sometimes surreal or frozen in the moment. Ghostly apparitions, life sized hands, delicate candles, celestial bodies, vital elements like water or fire, searching eyes, and a melding of uneasy spaces- all attempting to work in concert to create new narratives.scription goes here

Coupling an archeologist's perspective with an artists approach, Swiss artist Nina Schipoff creates the illusion of a blissful moment in a remote place.Nina Schipoff (D/CH) is a interdisciplinary artist working in painting, photography and installation. She graduated from the Geneva University of Art and Design( HEAD) in 2008 and obtained a postgraduate diploma in painting from the Geneva School of Stage Set Design in 2009. In her artworks she questions the interaction of man and nature and their ecological and geopolitical impact
Her narrations evoke the longing for a untamed paradise in a complex world

This is an exhibition of portraits created between October and November 2022. There are thirty portraits and quotations from over fifty hours of interviews, with people who were on Svalbard at the time. No portrait was posed or directed, instead each portrait is a candid moment during the course of an interview. These portraits do not represent the community but merely reflect some of the people that were here in that moment of time. At the end of the exhibition the portraits will be gifted to those who sat for them.

Swedish artist and film maker Lisa Vipola presents the film documentary 'Resan till Mirakelmannen' (EN: Journey to the Miracle Man) at Spitsbergen Artists Center in Nybyen.
Together with Fabian Wigran, these two chronically ill friends travel to Brazil to meet John of God, “The Miracle Man”.
Neither of them believes in the supernatural but their curiosity and the hope of being cured makes them go with an organization that promises healing through spiritual surgery. Will they be helped, indoctrinated or redeemed?
'Resan till Mirakelmannen' premiered in 2018 at Gothenburg Film festival and has been screened in Sweden, Poland, Latvia and San Francisco.

Estonian sound artist Juhan Vihterpal came to Svalbard to create a soundscape inspired by Svalbard which Estonian performance artist Lumi Kristin Vihterpal will use for her performance in mid-October in Longyearbyen. Juhan collected environmental sounds from Svalbard and then processed them. He also used a modular synthesizer to create the soundscapes inspired by Svalbard. At this event Juhan will work to mix the material he created here, and do a live improvisational electronic performance. This is a work in progress with the final piece being used by Lumi Kristin in her later performance. This is a great opportunity to observe and experience how a sound artist works and to hear how this work in progress is being formed. Please enter by the side entrance. Special thanks to Cultural Endowment of Estonia and Nordic Culture Point.

Working with mud, seaweed, rusted iron, Margaret has created a palette of colors unique to Svalbard, and made a series of prints. There will also be exhibitions of colored ice in locations around town.

Between the Glacier and the Sea presents a series of site-responsive installation and performance projects based on Liu’s extensive research in the Arctic region and speaks to the interconnectedness and fragility of our relationship with the natural environment.
For over two decades, Beili Liu has been making spatial compositions that examine themes of migration, cultural memory, labor, social and environmental concerns. Liu is a Chinese-born American visual artist who has exhibited extensively internationally. Liu’s current artistic research focuses on the complex ecological, geopolitical, and environmental concerns facing the Circumpolar North and the urgency of the climate crisis on a planetary scale. Her Circumpolar North research has received support from the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, the Fulbright Arctic Chair Distinguished Scholar Award, and the Pollock Prize for Creativity.

March 3 to April 27 Three Svalbard Artists featuring new works from Elizabeth Bourne’s Arctic Sanctuary series, a performance by Stein Henningsen and videos of past performances, and new paintings by landscape artist Olaf Storø will be on display.

18 March Louise Rapley will present a screening of her work in progress screening, showing the new work that she is doing in Svalbard. There will be questions after the showing.

Korean video artist will present three films at a screening on April 19. She will show her films Plantarians and Get Some Sunshine, as well as her work in progress done in Svalbard, Arctic Garden. There will be a questions period after the film.

August 10 The Oru Project by the Kotzebue Kollectiv from Estonia. Heritage, hauntology, and the ghosDescription goes here

August 22, Australian Artist Amanda Page will talk about her current Spitsbergen Artist Residency project on documenting seeds for a seed deposit from the Australian Grains Genebank to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. She will also share some recent works from her arts practice based on projects that developed from research trips to Antarctica, Finland and Iceland.escription goes here

September20, Exhibition of paint pen drawings by Norwegian artist Andreas Lærum exploring the transitions between nature and technology, light and dark.

October 20 Experimental musician and sound artist James Welburn presents a varied selection of experimental music including his work in progress made on Svalbard.

November 5, Learn about Hong Kong Canadian artist Michelle Fung’s lifelong art project of a grand ecotopian/dystopian world in the year 2084. Populated with giant puffins, a mountain-size ice-cream maker, and ruled by the Ice Queen (an ice sculpture) and her magicians, Northlandia is a surreal arctic tale of the precarious balance between human greed and the magical landscape, between the north and the rest of the world and between self-preservation and the rapidly changing climate.
You will be see the original woodcuts she recently created in Longyearbyen and around Svalbard, create a pencil rubbing from an original woodblock and be guided to create your own futuristic drawing.