ROOM IN BLOCK 2
Installation: digitally printed cotton, objects painted matte grey. 1st Arctic Biennale of Contemporary Art, Barentsburg, Svalbard, curated by Alexander Ponomarev
When does a place start feeling like home, and how early can that begin? Every place now has a digital double, a version of it made of images and data that circulates without it. We make these doubles daily, photographing a room and sending it to someone who has never been there, and they arrive ahead of the place itself: a city is looked at from a satellite before anyone travels to it, so there is no first time and every arrival turns out to be a second one. I had never thought about the Arctic before I went there, and one room became the way into it. A room is small enough to be learned completely, and from there the strangeness of everything around it starts to thin.
In a vacated apartment in Block 2, semi-transparent cotton panels hang across the space, printed with a 3D image of this same room. The image holds the shape of the room without its skin, and against that bareness the peeling paint and the worn floor become the valuable material. Some of the objects are painted matte grey to match the image, and one of the shadows on the floor was painted there rather than cast. The digital and the physical sit inside one another, and both versions of the room are present at once.
Credits
Concept and installation: Yulia Nemova
Fabric and printing: Shuyskie Sittsy / Шуйские ситцы,
partner of the Arctic Biennale
Realised within the first art-and-science expedition of the Arctic Biennale, Barentsburg, Svalbard, 2026
Operator: Arctic Biennale, Centre for the Art of Free Elements,
Alexander Ponomarev
