About

Arctic Pavilion is an independent, artist-led nomadic platform based in Svalbard. Rooted in site-responsive artistic practice, Arctic Pavilion works from the Arctic outward, engaging with contemporary Arctic conditions and their global implications. Moving across places, disciplines and perspectives, the Pavilion approaches the Arctic not as a remote periphery to be observed, but as a lived territory and a position from which to look outward — where questions of climate, power, sovereignty, extraction, technology and belonging are increasingly visible.
Through artistic collaborations, projects, encounters, publications and its evolving mobile infrastructure, Arctic Pavilion develops artistic work across shifting sites and conditions while maintaining its artistic independence. At its core is a commitment to artistic freedom, presence and exchange — and to art as a way of sensing, questioning and understanding realities still unfolding.

Arctic Pavilion was founded in 2023 by artists Ina Otzko and Stein Henningsen.

Our Mission

TO CREATE, CONNECT AND MOVE FROM THE ARCTIC

We initiate artistic projects and collaborations that respond to place, movement and changing conditions — connecting artists, perspectives and audiences across the Arctic and beyond.

Our Vision

TO SHIFT THE ARCTIC
FROM PERIPHERY TO PERSPECTIVE

We envision the Arctic not as a remote edge to be observed from elsewhere, but as a place from which to look outward — a lived and changing territory where art can open new perspectives on the forces shaping our shared world.

ARTISTS & CURATORS

Arctic Pavilion is founded and artistically directed by Ina Otzko and Stein Henningsen, bringing together their experience as artists, curators and initiators of independent artistic platforms.

Otzko co-founded ArtBase Helgeland 66°N in 2005, an artist-led platform in Northern Norway that included an international residency programme from 2012 to 2016. She has curated exhibitions and numerous public art projects, and initiated, curated and edited 100 Norwegian Photographers, bringing together the work of one hundred contemporary Norwegian photographers and published internationally by Hatje Cantz in 2019.

Henningsen founded and curates Arctic Action International Performance Festival, established in Svalbard in 2015. The festival brings together international artists working with live performance, creating time and space for artistic work to develop in direct relation to Svalbard’s landscape, environment and social conditions. Across its editions, Arctic Action has established a distinct platform for experimental live art in the High Arctic.

Together, their backgrounds span artist-led initiatives, residencies, festivals, exhibitions, publications, public art and international collaboration — forming the foundation for Arctic Pavilion as an independent platform for artistic experimentation, exchange and presentation.