Announcing nominations for residencies at Artica Svalbard 2024

Queen Sonja Print Award is a key partner to Artica Svalbard, one of Norway’s leading not-for-profit residency foundations. Based in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Artica offers unique residency experiences to artists from all disciplines.

Residencies form the core of Artica Svalbard's programme, and artists are nominated by their four key partners: Norwegian Nonfiction Writers' and Translators' Association (NFFO), Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA), and the Queen Sonja Print Award. Artica provides access to a studio space, print workshop and a network of international peers, offering the space and time needed to research, share and practice new ideas.

For more information about the QSPA and Artica partnership, see here.

Cathrine Alice Liberg, is a Norwegian-Singaporean artist and printmaker working in a variety of techniques, including lithography, photogravure, cyanotype, etching and mezzotint. Her art revolves mainly around the family portrait, where she contemplates the stories that were lost through her family’s migration, and how descendants can never become reliable narrators of their ancestors’ lives. She is also interested in how our understanding of foreign lands and cultures become infused with misinterpretations and fantasies – drawing much inspiration from her own upbringing in a mixed European and Asian household.

Ellen Heck, works as a printmaker in North Carolina, United States. Over the past decade, through several print projects, she has explored specific questions about identity—its creation, variability, persistence and change—by combining subject matter and thematically resonant printmaking techniques. She has participated in residencies at Kala Art Institute, Northern Print, Rockport Center for the Arts, and Scuola Grafica. Artica Svalbard will be her fifth residency experience.

Januario Jano, is a interdisciplinary visual artist, living and working between London, Luanda and Lisbon. His practice spans sculpture, video, photography, textiles, sound installations, and performance, and is substantially research-based. Jano is interested in processes of memory, culture identity and production. “Research is the substantive feature of my artistic practice. Reflecting on the ideas of home and self, I constantly challenge my approach through history exploration and contemporary narrative catechism within the context of the growing interdependence of the world’s economies, cultures, and populations. I am enthralled with the hypothesis of a delicate balance between fiction and reality, alarmed by the increasing concern over human and non-human coexistence, galvanised by the urge to create time and space feasible correlation. In this context the role of the body is pivotal, and its multidimensional representation occurs within the framework of proverbial globalisation and cross-cultural interaction.”