Artica Svalbard and Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) are delighted to host Cristina Lucas as the guest artist for Artica Listens 2019, the event was co-curated by the two organizations.

'It seems natural to think that what begins has to end, but how easy is this to assume when it is our own species in question? Will it be possible to reverse the processes that otherwise undoubtedly lead us to a not so far off apocalypse?' – Cristina Lucas

Using the nearly one-hundred-year-old Svalbard Treaty as a point of departure, the project included specially commissioned works of interactive public sculptures 'Flags of Svalbard Citizens’ and a new film entitled ‘The People That Is Missing’, which was shot by Lucas during her residency in Svalbard. Both were premiered in Longyearbyen for the Artica Listens event.

The Svalbard Treaty today stands as a singular document of international collaboration. Nearly one hundred years after its signing, the treaty remains a functioning agreement among 44 nations that, while recognising Norwegian sovereignty over the Archipelago, proposes a formulation with utopian ideals of an international commons rarely seen in global geopolitics.

Lucas’s work probes the treaty’s utopian appeal to international cooperation and shines a light on the paradoxes that are revealed, one hundred years later, within a rising tide of global geopolitical disunion and lack of concerted will to reverse the human-made destruction of our planet.

More information about the ‘Flags of Svalbard Citizens’ project can be found here.

More information about the film ‘The People That Is Missing’ can be found here.

 As part of the event an artist talk between Lucas, Artica director Eli Skatvedt and journalist Line Nagell Ylvisåkerlive was live-streamed on our social media channels, a recording of which can be watched here:

Cristina Lucas

Based in Madrid, Spain, Cristina Lucas is an artist interested in mechanisms of power. She analyses principal political and economic structures, dissecting them in order to reveal the contradictions between official history, reality, and collective memory. Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico; MUDAM Luxemburg; and Tegenboschvanvreden, Amsterdam; as well as in group exhibitions at Manifesta 12, Palermo; the 12th Shanghai Biennale; MACBA, Barcelona; the 28th Bienal de São Paulo; and the 10th Istanbul Biennial.