ARTICA Svalbard Residency | Week 9

I am now two-thirds through my epic Svalbard artist residency. Time flies by so fast, but at the same time I feel as if I have been here forever, because so much has happened in such a short amount of time, and I have managed to produce more art in two months than I have in these past two years combined. After experiencing what can be described as a bit of a mid-residency dip, it was good to once again spend a week exploring Svalbard and reminding myself of what a special place this is. I definitely want to make sure I make the last month in Longyearbyen count!

I kicked off the week by joining a bonfire party in the midnight sun together with artists and writers from the Arctic Circle Residency. I met lots of great new people (even meeting up with a long time Instagram-friend for the first time!), and it will definitely stand out as one of the most memorable and magical evenings during my time in Svalbard:

This week my parents finally made it up to 78 degrees north, and I have been very excited to show them all of the places I have come to love up here. To kick off their Svalbard experience, we travelled on Hurtigruten’s brand new hybrid-electric catamaran M/S Bard to see the mountains and hopefully spot some wildlife. While we did not spot any polar bears this time, we were so lucky to see three walrus swimming up close!

The captain of M/S Bard chooses the route according to weather conditions and recent wildlife sightings, and on this particular day we travelled westwards towards Coles Bay and Grumant, to which I had never been before. Abandoned in the mid sixties, Grumant was a Soviet mining settlement, and the nearby Coles Bay was from where they shipped out the mined coal. As a result, the hills of Coles Bay and Grumant are now scattered with the eerie remains of old buildings, as well as a graveyard and a railroad track. Seeing these dilapidated structures standing alone in the vast desolate landscape is chilling and fascinating. While many enjoy Svalbard mostly for its untouched nature - what I personally find the most fascinating is seeing how humans cope and survive in extreme conditions. It is hard to imagine that Grumant was once a buzzing and thriving settlement with over one thousand people. After the mining operations ceased in the sixties, some of the houses were taken down and moved to Barentsburg, a Russian coal mining town of 500 people which is still in operation at Svalbard.

After the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, relations between the predominantly Norwegian town of Longyearbyen and the Russian town of Barentsburg have been icy cold. There are no roads connecting the settlements, so the mere 55 km separating the two need to be traversed by either boat, helicopter or snowmobile. Despite this, cultural exchanges and friendly sports competitions between Russians and Norwegians have always been a mainstay of Svalbard life - up until now. This week saw Norwegian Constitution Day (17th May), and spending it here must have been one of the most surreal experiences I have had. Not only because it was cold and I could not wear my usual finery, but because all the celebratory speeches were also held in Russian. Traditionally, Norwegian Constitution Day has first and foremost catered to the youngest - we have children’s parades rather than military parades, and the afternoon is always filled with family activities and children’s performances. For many years, the tradition at Svalbard has been to invite the children of Barentsburg to join in the festivities. In an isolated place like this, where Norwegian and Russian politics physically intersect, and local life vs. global interests are constantly being juggled, life is not always so black and white. For the sake of the youngest, local authorities have decided that war needs to take a break on what has, after all, been dubbed as “Children’s Day” in Norway. Interestingly, the waitress serving us in the evening turned out to be Russian, and upon asking her about popular beverages in Russia, she kindly served us tea prepared in the Russian way, accompanied by brandy. While I do not know what her story is, I am sure it must be challenging to be a Russian in Longyearbyen these days.

On the topic of Barentsburg - the town is actually named after Dutch explorer Willem Barentsz, who accidentally discovered Svalbard in 1596 on his misson to find the Northeast Passage to China. To round up my parents’ visit, we spent their last night at Camp Barentz, about 15 km outside of Longyearbyen. Organised by Hurtigruten, Camp Barentz offers a lovely bonfire meal of reindeer stew, wine, beer, aquavit, hot beverages and cake, accompanied by interesting lectures on Willem Barentsz and polar bears. The hut is a replica of the hut Barentsz and his men constructed on the Russian island of Novaya Zemlya in 1596, when they were forced to overwinter in the arctic after having discovered Svalbard. In order to construct their winter cabin, they had to use driftwood as well as wood from their ship, which was being crushed by the arctic ice. Only 12 of his men made it back to the Netherlands - Barentz himself sadly died of scurvy as they commenced on their return journey in small rowing boats.

My latest print, which is a rather intricate line etching in the making, actually refers to some of the Norwegian and Russian disputes in the Arctic, and how we are once again scrambling to secure our positions in the Northeast Passage which Barentsz was once trying to discover. With sea ice melting rapidly with each passing year, his dream of sailing across the shorter, northern sea routes to Asia is quickly becoming a reality, but also a potential geopolitical nightmare and headache. Combining elements from ancient maps of the Arctic, as well as my own sketches of cargo ships, ice breakers and various vehicles for polar exploration, I attempt to link together old and contemporary views of the northern terra nullius.

ARTICA Svalbard Residency | Week 8

One of the first things I learned when coming to Longyearbyen, is that it is a very sought after place by creatives. The Arctic is a destination where many people come to re-discover or realise themselves, and I am not necessarily excluding myself from this category. As a result, the community here is continually being approached by artists, researchers and journalists with project proposals which, although interesting, often require the extraction of knowledge, time and resources from the locals. While this is generally welcomed, it is also important that we as visiting creatives do not only seek to benefit from the community’s goodwill, but that we also give something back and contribute positively to making Longyearbyen a vibrant town to live.

As part of our residency with ARTICA, we are obliged to share our research and/or practice with the local community in the form of talks, workshops, performances, lectures, exhibitions etc. One really nice thing that Charlotte, the Director of ARTICA said, was that the best thing a resident artist can leave behind is not necessarily a finished artwork, but an experience. Nothing is more valuable than exchanging skills and knowledge. As a result, ARTICA hosts a range of diverse workshops and events, most recently a mooncake workshop with visiting pastry chef Ethan Kan, as well as a sun medallion workshop for kids in order to welcome the return of the sun after a long, dark arctic winter.

Photo: ARTICA

As my residency contribution, I decided that I wanted to host an introductory linocut course. I truly believe in the power of craft and collective workshops, and that the art making, maybe even more so than the art itself, makes for happier human beings and better communities. The reason why I chose to focus on linocut printmaking, is because it is a printmaking technique that does not require the use of a printing press or toxic solvents. It can be done at home using a hand-printing tool, and the inks can be cleaned up with soap and water. My aim was therefore to give the workshop participants the foundation and confidence needed to be able to master the art of linocut printmaking at home, without needing access to a professional print studio.

I wanted the course to run over two days in order to go more in-depth and take the class beyond a very elementary introduction to linocut. During the first day we learned how to make a basic single-coloured linocut print by experimenting with different tools for mark making and different methods for printing. On the second day we experimented with different ways of printing a multi-coloured print, using layering and jigsaw puzzle techniques, as well as applying colour gradients.

Photo: ARTICA

I am so impressed with how many amazing prints our wonderful participants managed to produce in the course of two half-day sessions! It was also great for me getting to meet some more of Longyearbyen’s long-term residents. It is fantastic to see what ARTICA, and the workshops and events which are hosted here, means for so many in this town. It has grown into a truly wonderful community, much thanks to the current staff, Charlotte and Lisa. That being said, with Svalbard having a higher turnover of people than other places, they stress the importance that people form an affinity and positive relation with ARTICA itself as a cultural institution and social meeting place, and not just with the individuals who work here. I truly hope my workshop helped contribute to this, and that many will continue with printmaking after this weekend.

ARTICA Svalbard Residency | Week 7

Every time you think you are getting used to the landscape here, it changes. Just as I was getting used to the view of the still blue water which spring had brought with it, the beginning of this week greeted us with massive packs of drift ice which had swept into the fjord overnight. While creating a bit of a havoc for the smaller boats, the big blocks of ice looked spectacular and dramatic - just what you imagine the Arctic to be. It very much helped set the tone for my next print.

This week I paid another visit to the Svalbard Museum and the North Pole Expedition Museum to conduct some research. Since many decades back, Svalbard has been a launching point for (mainly masculine) attempts at polar exploration, and a stage (in the double meaning of the word) for conquering the great white unknown. Both museums contain some beautiful prints, objects and images which tell the tales of early polar expeditions - such as those of Walter Wellman, Solomon August Andrée, Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld, Otto Torell, Roald Amundsen, Fridjof Nansen and Umberto Nobile. They all used Svalbard as a base for their further ventures northwards.

From the Svalbard Museum:

Nowadays we know that the North Pole is in the middle of an ocean and is covered in ice, but early explorers had no idea what they might find. Open sea? A huge hole? Undiscovered land? Were there inhabitants, previously unknown peoples? Serious research designed to find answers is often overshadowed by sensational, or even foolhardy expeditions to the north. Financial backers were often more inspired by narratives that bolstered national pride than by sober pursuit of research data.

To me, the most dramatic and emotionally charged of all Arctic expeditions must be the Andrée Expedition of 1897, in which Swedish explorer Solomon August Andrée and his two men attempted to fly over the North Pole in a hydrogen balloon departing from Svalbard’s Danskøya (Dane’s Island). While a bold and ingenious (and some might say unhinged) idea ahead of its time, the balloon had severe technical issues which Andrée supposedly attempted to conceal before launch - the forces of royal sponsorships and press publicity weighing heavily enough for him to take the risk of flying. Once the balloon soared out of view behind the mountains, Andrée and his team, consisting of Nils Strindberg and Knut Frænkel, were never seen again. The trajectory of their journey remained a mystery for 33 years, until the crew of a Norwegian whaling and research vessel accidentally stumbled upon their campsite at Kvitøya (White Island) in eastern Svalbard, where they found skeletal remains, photographic negatives, journals and a vast supply of food and clothes. I would heartily recommend reading Bea Uusma’s fantastic book on the subject, Expeditionen: min kärlekshistoria, in which she attempts to once and for all to solve the mystery of what led to their ultimate demise. She also features in a great episode about the expedition on Sveriges radio (in Swedish). Fragments of the balloon, made from varnished Chinese silk, can be seen in both the Svalbard Museum and the North Pole Expedition Museum. Seeing the fragments of fragile silk gave chills down my spine.

A fragment of Andrées balloon “The Eagle”, retrieved from Kvitøya. The balloon was custom-made in France from several layers of hand stitched, varnished Chinese silk.

While few of Earth’s places remain unexplored today, Svalbard and the idea of “North” still holds a mythical place to many. Svalbard, being both accessible and distant at the same time, has served as the perfect starting point for those wishing to explore the Arctic - now mostly for personal and creative growth rather than for national honour and glory - me being one of many.

The print that I am currently working is being created with all of these stories whirling around in my head. I found some stunning old photographs of the jagged mountains and glaciers around Magdalenefjorden in the Svalbard Museum Archives, and decided to use these as reference for my next mezzotint. By happy chance, I discovered that Magdalenefjorden is very close to Danskøya, from where Andrée launched his fatal balloon expedition. It is also the area where Dutch explorer Willem Barentsz first set eyes on Svalbard, which he then named Spitzbergen from its “spisse berg”, i.e. sharp jagged mountains.

With this information in mind, I have decided to incorporate fragments of contemporary illustrations from both Andrée’s expedition and Barentz’ discovery into the scenery - layering different histories together and charging the landscape with human narratives. After all, Svalbard’s nature, while beautiful on its own, has become a tableau and stage for human folly and ambition, being littered with tragic tales and crushed dreams.

ARTICA Svalbard Residency | Week 6

There is a marked change in the air, and I think spring is finally coming to Svalbard! I can hear the water hitting the shore and smell the seaweed, my shoes are suddenly touching bare ground and I even hear birds chirping. It feels amazing, but at the same time Svalbard does not feel like such a distant exotic planet anymore. Maybe it also has a bit to do with the fact that I have now reached the halfway point in my residency, and the initial novelty is starting to wear off.

To enjoy the sun and warmer temperatures, our residency coordinator Lisa took us on a hike up to Platåberget just above Longyearbyen. Tarzan, our lovable but goofy husky companion, came along as polar bear guard. Unlike our previous hike up to Sarkofagen, we now enjoyed spectacular clear views and firmer snow, making this hike a lot less physically strenuous than the last. We also walked past Ninavarden, a cairn erected to commemorate a young girl from Oslo who was killed here by a polar bear in 1996. It serves as a stark reminder to always carry a rifle and remain alert, even if you are in the vicinity of the settlement.

With life being very much confined to Longyearbyen, I try to attend a lot of the cultural activities that are happening around town. Last week I saw the amazing stand-up show “Hold kjeft, det er Ibsen” by Liv Gundersen at Kulturhuset, which had made its way up here all the way from the National Theatre in Oslo. This week my residency colleague Ellen and I attended an after-work poetry workshop in the local library, as well as the vernissage of the exhibition “Tidslag” at Nordover Gallery. The exhibition, presenting a selection of photographs by Herta Lampert Grøndal, Leif Grøndal, their daughter Eva Grøndal and music by granddaughter Aggie Grøndal Peterson, seeks to give an overview of everyday life at Svalbard, tying together past and present on an island that has little to no collective continuous memory. These images also counteract the idea that Svalbard has always been strictly a male-dominated, company town settlement or a starting point for masculine dreams of polar exploration - it has also been a family-oriented society in which women and children have made a home for themselves. Sadly, many names and stories are lost, and many remain anonymous, because nobody stays here long enough to recall the past. Everyone is just a visitor passing through for a few months or years. I am very glad I got to attend the opening, and hear speeches from people who have formed close ties and roots with Svalbard - the Grøndals being one of the few families that have some sort of generational connection to this island.

While I have come to love Longyearbyen more than I ever thought I would, the first bouts of homesickness are starting to creep in. Maybe because I long for proper spring, and maybe because the friends I have made here left this week - most being fellow residency artists and writers whom I have become close to in a very short period of time. Together we have explored Svalbard and Longyearbyen, and shared and discussed the joys and tribulations of creating and producing. That is Svalbard for you - people come and go, and you constantly need to readjust. Just as the exhibition Tidslag conveys - the inhabitants of Longyearbyen are in a constant flux.

Luckily I have many exciting printmaking projects in the making, and with access to a beautiful print studio I know I will manage to keep myself happy and occupied for the remainder of my stay. I also have friends and family coming to visit from the mainland in May, which I am very much looking forward to. Finding highlights and setting daily goals is incredibly important - especially in an isolated place like Longyearbyen where I have so little physical freedom and space to roam on my own, and where my social network is a lot more fluid and temporary than at home. It is very much up to me to keep myself entertained and stimulated, and I find a lot of joy and meaning in my work. That being said, making art is not always pure unmitigated fun. Getting up and dragging yourself to the studio is not always easy - after all, work is work - even for artists. There is a lot of demotivating trial and error, a lot of mundane and physically strenuous preparatory steps, as well as the constant inner battle with the voice in your head putting a lot of pressure on you to perform and produce while you are on this once-in-a-lifetime sponsored residency. It can sometimes feel overwhelming, but what I do is break everything into small achievable tasks, and pick myself a few tasks to tackle each day. It may be something as trivial but necessary as “polish two copper plates” or “cover two copper plates with hard ground to let them dry overnight”. If I can just show up for myself to do those small assignments, I also feel that I gain momentum to commence on the next one on the list. And slowly, step by step, I can see a new print emerging.

The print I have been working on this week is yet another motif in which I have taken small illustrations from old maps of the North Sea, re-drawn them and placed them together in new constellations - this image focusing especially on the tempestuous nature of the seas and the great perils explorers put themselves in on their journey to explore the northernmost shores of the earth. Next week I am going to attempt something slightly more bigger and ambitious. I cut up some of the test prints I have produced so far in my residency, and created a collage incorporating my mezzotint mountains into my maritime compositions. I quite liked how they turned out, giving the compositions a different sense of depth, and also providing a stark visual contrast between the softness of the backdrop and the sharp lines of the foreground. I will try making a large print where I combine all of these different elements into one. I love how previous prints always direct you where to go next.

ARTICA Svalbard Residency | Week 5

This week saw the last sunset for four months. From now on, the sun will be sitting higher and higher in the sky with each passing day, and falling asleep will prove increasingly difficult. To mark the occasion, we went on a late night stroll to enjoy the last beautiful plays of pastels which the setting sun throws over the snow. (The light here really is unbelievable and surreal, and impossible to capture on camera). We also walked past loads of adorable Svalbard reindeer. They are found only on Svalbard, and are the only type of reindeer native to Norway. They have adapted to harsh arctic conditions, and wander around Longyearbyen completely unfazed by people and noisy snowmobiles.

With the weather turning over the weekend, and powerful gusts of winds sweeping in over Longyearbyen, I have been enjoying my days in the studio. Although I have been going to Artica almost every day, Svalbard hits you with so many impressions that it takes a while for you to process things and translate this into artworks. I spent a lot of my first month just sightseeing and collecting information, looking for connections between prevalent themes here and the themes I have been exploring in my own art.

I have been mainly intrigued by the Arctic as a “stage” for exploration and geopolitics, as I very much link this to my own family history, which in many ways was formed by colonialism and geopolitical strife in and around Singapore. I see many resemblances and ironies between the European scramble for territories in South East Asia, and how we are now very protective of our resources and territories in the Arctic, as many powerful (Asian) nations are strategically placing themselves along the northeast passage as precious minerals and new sea routes are emerging with the melting ice.

Parallel to my research, I have also worked on developing a suitable visual language. Two whole weeks was spent creating a pretty large mezzotint, which is still a work in progress. The motif is based on old photos found in the digital archives of Svalbard Museum, and features a view from the old Svea mine. In it I have juxtaposted a series of figures - two 1920s Scandinavian coalminers, a 1980s Polish geologist, two 1930s English explorers, Amundsen and Nobile’s airship “Norge” which flew from Svalbard to the North Pole in 1926, and an airplane heading into the mountains. It could be the Russian Topolev which crashed into Operafjell in 1996, with the Scandinavian coalminers here watching their Russian and Ukrainian peers perish. Or it could be a modern tourist plane, the coalminers observing how the rising tourism industry is overtaking the dominant role they once held at Svalbard. It is an open-ended story, an attempt to draw lines between past and future, and how the Arctic as a stage for self-realization and geopolitical strife is as prevalent now as it was then.

From last week’s residency dinner and presentation at Artica, where I demonstrated how I had made and printed my mezzotint plate.

This week I decided to abandon mezzotint for a bit. While it is one of my favourite techniques, mezzotint tends to lock me into a slightly timid and naturalistic style. (It is also extremely time consuming). One of my goals before coming up here was to be a bit more bold and experimental, trying out different techniques and expressions and adopt a more playful approach to art. I also wanted to work more physically and less theoretically, letting the material and medium control the process more than a predetermined concept. I therefore decided to make some aquatint plates where I applied a hard ground marbling, letting the randomness of the marbled pattern determine the contents and composition of the image.

To me, the marbling was strongly reminiscent of water and oceans, and I reverted back to the research I did during my first week here when I visited Svalbard Museum and looked at various old maps of the Arctic regions. Using Pen Up on my Samsung pad, I photographed my marbled copper plates and made them part of digital collages where I added elements such as ships, polar bears and sea monsters from a variety of old northern maps. While I work with old techniques, I love the opportunities that digital tools open up to me. However, I always revert my digital sketches back to something physical, and through the printmaking process the final image takes on a life and visual quality of its own.

The ships I am using in my first composition are based off of ships from the Barentsz map. This map was created after the Dutch explorer Willem Barentsz “accidentally” discovered Svalbard in 1596. The boats on the map are very small, and as I am making mine larger and more detailed, I had to study quite a few drawings of 16th century ships to get a grip of how all the numerous sailing mechanisms were connected. This is the first line etching I am doing in over a decade, and I have been enjoying the process so much!

This new project has been such a breath of fresh air to me. For a long time now I have felt the need to free myself from only working with portraits and personal family histories, as well as remove myself from the very naturalistic style which I sometimes tend to adhere to. I have been wanting to engage in a greater variety of subjects, and explore historical ways of stylizing imagery. I feel that these new images are a step towards that goal. Most importantly, the subject of sea faring, exploration and East-West relations still feels greatly personal to me. Still a bit on the fence about the final product, but that might just be because this visual style feels very new and different to me at the moment.

Colour test print of “Hic Sunt Ursi Albi” (“Here There Be Polar Bears”)