How can art offer new perspectives on a changing Arctic? Join us for an artist talk with Italian artist Elena Mazzi.

Elena Mazzi explores the relationships between people, landscapes and society. Through fieldwork and dialogue with local communities, she examines how places shape identity and belonging, and how changes to our surroundings affect people’s lives.

Her doctoral research explores the landscapes associated with the Polar Silk Road – plans to develop trade routes through the Arctic. As sea ice retreats, new areas become accessible to shipping and resource extraction. Mazzi investigates how these changes bring together questions of economics, ecology and geopolitics, and how art can open up a wider range of perspectives on the region’s future.

Encounters with Sámi communities in Kiruna, Sweden, and Inuit communities in Narsaq, Greenland, are central to her ongoing project Nothing about us without us. Through a five-channel video installation and a book, she connects local experiences and knowledge with questions of mining, cultural identity and international trade.

Mazzi is also interested in how imaging technologies can expand our perception of the landscape. In her video work, she uses thermal cameras, which register differences in temperature and reveal aspects of our surroundings that the eye alone cannot see. This forms part of an exploration of how landscapes can be sensed and represented beyond our familiar human perspective.

The talk offers an opportunity to get to know Mazzi and her approach to making art, in which artistic enquiry, research and encounters with people and places inform one another.

About the artist

Elena Mazzi (b. 1984) studied art history at the University of Siena and art at IUAV in Venice and the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. She is a PhD candidate at Villa Arson and Université Côte d’Azur in Nice. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Luleå Biennial, the Istanbul Biennial and Whitechapel Gallery in London. Since 2015, she has also led workshops for artists, teachers and the public in collaboration with schools, art academies and other institutions.