Kathy Sirico
In residence: November - December 2025
Kathy Sirico (b. Philadelphia, USA, 1990) is a Brooklyn-based artist and poet working at the intersection of painting, sculpture, textiles, and installation. Her practice is deeply rooted in climate-conscious making, with climate change and ecological grief forming the conceptual backbone of her work. She holds an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and a BS from Skidmore College, and her work has been exhibited widely across the United States and internationally.
Sirico has participated in numerous residencies, including The Arctic Circle Residency (Svalbard, 2023), The Santa Fe Art Institute’s Changing Climate program, and MassMoCA’s Assets for Artists. In 2022, she was a finalist for the Frankenthaler Climate Art Award for her project Floating Chronologies, which reimagined our relationships with trees through a climate-conscious lens.
During her Artica Svalbard residency, Sirico will continue two interwoven bodies of work—Svalbard Abstractions and Svalbard Mythologies. The first is a geometric, mixed-media painting and stained-glass series informed by her direct experiences of the Arctic, inspired by the textures, forms, and deep-time aesthetics of Svalbard’s landscapes. Abstract yet specific, these works reference geological patterns and climate-affected phenomena like glacial bubbles and layered stone.
In tandem, Svalbard Mythologies is a poetic narrative project that imagines interspecies dialogues—interviews with whale bones, conversations with melting glaciers, and the sounds of icebergs—all calling for deeper non-human empathy. Poetry and painting feed into each other in Sirico’s practice, together expressing grief, wonder, and the urgency of ecological transformation.
Kathy looks forward to deepening her connection to Svalbard’s landscapes and engaging meaningfully with the local community during her stay. She plans to offer environmental art and poetry workshops, particularly for young people, and envisions sharing her work through an artist talk and poetry reading in Longyearbyen.
Instagram: @moonrisekathy