Future Cartographies investigates the condition of complexity and rapidly transformation of geographies within and beyond the arctic. It is a dialogue between the work of two artists, Rúrí and Elena Mazzi, engaging with spatial research through artistic practice. Their approaches intersect art and architecture as a spatial method of reading and interpreting territorial changes. The cartographies are conceived as a critical lens for understanding infrastructures, territories, and resource extraction systems, a spatial tool envisioning new narratives through documentation, data interpretation, and visual translations.
The exhibition is organized by Umeå School of Architecture, in collaboration with UmArts research centre and Galleri Verkligheten, and curated by Maria Luna Nobile as a contribution to the EURAU26 LATITUDES Symposium Situated reflections on architectural research, and the Off-Summit program for the Arctic Art Summit.
Rúrí is a visual artist whose art focuses on humankind and its relation to the Earth and the Cosmos. Since 1999 many of her works raise questions about water, from the impact of Aluminium smelting on waterflows in Iceland, to the shortage of safe water for consumption, and the effects of melting icecaps on shorelines. Over a career spanning more than five decades, Rúrí, has centered her artistic practice on moral and existential questions that confront inhumanity, imperialism, capitalism, social injustice, and environmental destruction. A pioneer of performance art in Iceland, she has worked across a wide range of media including painting, sculpture, photography, film, multimedia installation, writing, and performance. Her groundbreaking performance Golden Car (1974) was among the first works in Iceland to engage explicitly with political activism. Rúrí represented Iceland at the 2003 Venice Biennale with Archive – Endangered Waters, an interactive multimedia installation presenting visual and acoustic data from 52 waterfalls threatened by dam construction in the Icelandic highlands. Rúrí was awarded the Icelandic Visual Arts Council´s Honorary Award 2026.
Elena Mazzi investigates the geopolitics of the Arctic through undertaking artistic research on residencies across Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard and Sapmi to develop new artworks in dialogue with the community. Elena’s project the Upcoming Polar Silk Road defines the new geopolitical and economic spaces in the Arctic region. The artwork is an analysis of the complex intertwining of economy, geopolitics, ecology and mobility within the Arctic regions most affected by the infrastructural and political transformations linked to the Polar Silk Road. This new axis will connect Europe, Russia and China by opening a ‘Northern Route’ over the circumpolar region to exploit the subsoil of the Arctic seas which contains oil, gas, uranium, gold, platinum and zinc. The work consists of a video documenting key places of this transition, such as the possible new port of Finnafjörður in the north-east of the island and the nearby CIAO Institute, the new meteorological-astronomical observatory founded to cement the agreement between China and Iceland, countries that are now protagonists in the process of defining new trade routes. Elena Mazzi is undertaking a practice-based PhD at Villa Arson in Nice, France.
Opening Hours:
10 June 19.00 – 22.00 Preview
11 June 14.00 – 18.00
12 June 14.00 – 18.00
13 June 14.00 – 18.00
14 June 13.00 – 17.00
15 June 14.00 – 18.00
16 June 14.00 – 18.00
17 June 14.00 – 18.00
18 June 14.00 to 18.00