Kristina Chan: Habitable Climes

Kristina Chan is an artist-photographer and printmaker who lives in London, and was born in Canada.

Her exploration of The Sunderland Collection is informed by her long fascination with the process of mapmaking, and the tools used to chart the land, seas and skies – in her words, “the systems and scales we apply to the world.”

Drawn to ideas about remote territories and changing, less-documented geographies, Chan embarked on two excursions, the first to the Arctic Circle via the Svalbard Channel, and the second to the Nevada Desert.

During these trips, she experienced extremes in landscapes and climatic conditions which inspired a feeling of “awe and caution”. She reflected on the subjective concept of ‘fact’ when it comes to recording territories, and the part that what she refers to as “fantasy and fallacy” plays in the creation of maps, measurements and visual records.

Chan’s expedition to the Arctic, for example, was through a shifting landscape in which islands and markers are unrecorded due to their remoteness and to the changing landscape, beyond the reach of contemporary navigation tools.

For more info please visit https://oculi-mundi.com/kristina-chan-habitable-climes