As part of the Nordic Alliance of Artists’ Residencies on Climate Action (NAARCA) residency exchange programme, NAARCA commissioned artist Nikhil Vettukattil will be in residence at Cove Park for four weeks following residencies at Narsaq International Research Station and Artica Svalbard. 

While at Cove Park, Nikhil will continue developing ‘Cantina‘ – a new body of work that explores what a healthy, affordable and climate-friendly diet in the Nordics might look like by writing recipes divided into sections on disaster, survival and resistance and distributing them online, in cooking sessions and on embroidered garments.

Nikhil Vettukattil (b. 1990, Bengaluru, India) is an artist and writer who lives and works in Oslo. Using a range of media such as sound, installation, performance, text, sculpture, and video, his practice questions modes of representation and image-making processes in their relation to lived experiences. While in residence at Artica Svalbard this Autumn and over the course of the coming year, Nikhil will develop a new piece of work that will incorporate research on food production and distribution in Svalbard and its relation to the climate crisis.

He has previously exhibited at venues such as Kunsthall Oslo (2022), Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo (2022), K-U-K, Trondheim (2021), CAPC, Bordeaux (2021), Art Hub Copenhagen (2021), K4 Galleri, Oslo (2021), Louise Dany, Oslo (2020), EKA Gallery, Tallinn (2020), Kristiansand Kunsthall (2020), and Le Bourgeois, London (2019). Forthcoming exhibitions include Counterimaginaries at Tromsø Kunstforening (February 2023), and a duo show with Halvor Rønning at FELIX GAUDLITZ, Vienna (May 2023). He is a member of the art collectives Tenthaus and Carrie, as well as a part of Atelier Kunstnerforbundet and the Institute for Scene Experiments. As part of Tenthaus, he will co-curate the MOMENTUM 12 Biennale opening May 2023.

The Nordic Alliance of Artists’ Residencies on Climate Action (NAARCA) brings together Cove Park (Scotland) and Saari Residence (Finland), Artica Svalbard (Norway), Art Hub Copenhagen (Denmark), Baltic Art Center (Sweden), Narsaq International Research Station (Greenland), and Skaftfell Art Center (Iceland) to collaborate on research, institutional change and public education around climate action.

Image: A simulated image produced with a machine learning neural network. Based on thousands of images related to key words such as “nordic food” “food photography”, “nutrition”, “wellness”, “ecology” and “sustainable” this synthetic image suggests some of the dominant aesthetics and visual language in
contemporary culture today and their limitations; provided by the artist.