Mhairi Killin is a Scottish artist based on the Isle of Iona. Her collaborative, research-based practice spans installation, drawing, print and 16mm film.

Her work counters the notion of islands as marginal and romantic, revealing them instead as centres from which to question the forces shaping our futures: global warming, extractive capitalism and the continued colonisation of real and virtual spaces. Killin often draws on her ancestral history on Iona, working with Gaelic language and cosmologies to reinterpret land and sea use in the Hebrides and cultivate a reciprocal relationship with place and people.

In 2024, Killin was nominated by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway for the visual arts residency at Artica Svalbard, linking Iona and Svalbard to ask why and how contemporary art should engage with islands in response to the climate emergency and the legacies of extraction. Elected to the Royal Scottish Academy in 2015, she continues to work between her studio on Iona and Svalbard’s Arctic landscape. Her current project, From the Mouths of the Caves – Listening to Hear Another Island’s Song, is supported by Creative Scotland, the RSA and Artica Svalbard.