Announcing the OCA Nominated Artists for Artica Svalbard 2025 Residencies

left: Clea Darnaud, centre: Bianca Hisse, right: Christian Danielewitz, photo: Federico Pellachin

The Office for Contemporary Art Norway and Artica Svalbard are delighted to announce the artists nominated for residencies at Artica Svalbard in 2025. We will welcome the collaborative duo Bianca Hisse and Christian Danielewitz, along with visual artist Cléa Darnaud.

Bianca Hisse (b. 1994, Brazil) and Christian Danielewitz (b. 1978, Denmark) are an interdisciplinary duo whose practice interrogates the entanglements of geopolitics, technology, and environmental change. Hisse, a visual artist and choreographer, explores how physical spaces are shaped and influenced by economic and geo-political forces, using performance, collective movement, and imagination as tools for resistance. Danielewitz, a visual artist, researcher, and writer, focuses on the global impact of resource extraction, digital technologies, and the uneven distribution of pollution and toxic waste, bringing attention to the often hidden or disregarded consequences of these processes.

During their residency, Hisse and Danielewitz will investigate the concept of "grey-zone operations"—activities that occur in the blurred space between peace and conflict, such as cyber-attacks and sabotage of critical infrastructure. Their work seeks to render these invisible threats visible, engaging with Svalbard's strategic role in global power struggles and technological networks.

Cléa Darnaud (b. 1993, France) is a visual artist specialising in drawing and intaglio engraving. Her practice transforms everyday experiences, memories, and landscapes into singular visual narratives that traverse the boundaries between reality and fiction. Darnaud’s work seeks to capture fragments of life, transformed and interpreted through travel, to create imaginative visual forms. Having completed residencies across Europe and North America, including in Greenland and Finland, she uses these journeys to deepen her exploration of place, memory, and narrative.

For her residency at Artica Svalbard, Darnaud plans to collect fragments of life in Longyearbyen—from conversations to objects and visual impressions—to inspire a narrative that merges an artist’s book and a graphic novel. The project will draw inspiration from the unique environment and life in Svalbard, creating a story closely connected to the local context.

According to the OCA selection jury: “Amongst many excellent applications, the jury considered that those from Cléa Darnaud and Bianca Hisse / Christian Danielewitz stood out. Although their practices are very different, both rooted their applications in the unique possibilities Artica would afford for exploring and developing longer-term interests in their work. Darnaud’s striking graphic works frequently depict polar environments, combining the specificities of particular landscapes with narrative explorations of the lives of those who inhabit them. Hisse and Danielewitz use film, installation, and performance to crystallise deep research processes, which in this case they have already started in relation to the ‘grey zone’ of data gathering infrastructures in Svalbard. In both cases, they showed a very thoughtful engagement with Svalbard as a context and a sensitivity to possibilities for engaging the local community during the residency period.”

Artica Svalbard and the Office for Contemporary Art Norway are excited to welcome the nominees in 2025. Their projects will contribute to new dialogues about geopolitics, ecological fragility, and the intersection of personal and environmental histories in the Arctic.