Duration
January-December 2026
About the project
We explore the critical agency of art and creativity in environmental humanities, especially when the two fields overlap and a person works as a practice-based researcher or a research-led artist. The team brings together early career art historians, artist-researchers and anthropologists from Norway and Asia to initiate an interdisciplinary and transregional conversation.
We will invite four international artist-researchers to stage a series of seminars and workshops with local collaborators in Oslo. Michael Leung is a Hong Kong artist/designer and writer working with local farmers and villagers. By staging festivals and self-publishing, he speaks about indigeneity and tries to foster solidarity in the ongoing endeavor of decolonization. Aki Nagasaka is a Japanese artist, researcher and educator focusing on human and non-human communities rooting in specific ecologies. Her practices illustrate the dynamics and relatedness of the myriad beings in the world. Mia Yu is a Chinese artist-filmmaker and curator working on the historical, socio-political and environmental complexities of energy infrastructures in Asia. Her projects seek to integrate anthropological and archival research with the film, performance and exhibition, exploring possibilities in storytelling and public engagement. Kristiina Koskentola is a Finnish transdisciplinary artist with Karelian heritage, currently dividing her time between Amsterdam, Helsinki and Northern China. Her interdisciplinary, multisensory and collaborative practice engages with ecological philosophy, shamanic knowledge systems and posthuman discourse.
Our goal is to connect art and environmental humanities in a deeper manner, offering an opportunity for the artist role and the researcher role to reflect the methodologies of each other. We also hope to bring Asian perspectives to the Nordic regions.
The research group is funded by OCEH’s research initiative Collaborative Junior Research Teams.
Public events
The public events will take place on 25–27 August, 2026.
Project lead and team members
Project lead
- Sarah Chen Huang (Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas, University of Oslo)
Team members
- Michael Leung
- Aki Nagasaka
- Mia Yu
- Malin Kristine Graesse (University of Stavanger)
- Yayi Zheng (Aarhus University)
- Yixin Xu (University of Oslo)
Collaboration partners
- Amber Worlds: A Geological Anthropology for the Anthropocene
- An Ecological History of Eurasian Art
- Creative practice – (trans)forming space, place and the environment
- The Guttormsgaard Archive
- Prof. Susanne M. Winterling, Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO)