Biography
Julie Sjöfn Gasiglia (IS/FR) is a multidisciplinary visual artist who explores the entanglement between humans and a more-than-human world through sculpture, sound, video, and photography. website / instagram
Vala Sigþrúðar Jónsdóttir (IS) is a visual artist who examines the relationship between craft, technology, and nature through image, text, and textile.
website / instagram
Sigrún Gyða Sveinsdóttir (IS) is a visual artist, director, and opera maker who connects contemporary visual culture with classical operatic forms while examining social power structures.
website / instagram
curator – Þóranna Dögg Björnsdóttir (IS) is a sound and visual artist and curator with a background in ArtScience, whose practice centres on listening, perception, and spatial experience.
website
Mattias De Craene (BE) is a saxophonist, composer, and sound artist who develops a contemplative and cinematic body of work at the intersection of jazz, electronics, film, and sound art.
website / instagram
Stijn Demeulenaere (BE) is a saxophonist, composer, and sound artist who develops a contemplative and cinematic body of work at the intersection of jazz, electronics, film, and sound art.
website / instagram
Kevin Trappeniers (BE) is a transdisciplinary visual artist – and initiator of Art / Earth – Jöklaminni – who explores the relationships between humans, landscape, time, and ecology through installations and performances.
website / instagram
curator – Nicolas Baeyens (BE) is a visual artist, researcher, and lecturer at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, where he works on materiality, memory, and impermanence.
website / instagram
In residentie Art / Earth – Jöklaminni
02.03.2026 – 03.04.2026
Art / Earth – Jöklaminni is a transdisciplinary art-science project initiated by Stray Light and curated by Nicolas Baeyens and Þóranna Dögg Björnsdóttir. The project brings artists and scientists together to explore how we relate to a planet in motion. Taking glaciers as its point of departure, it connects scientific knowledge with artistic engagement with landscapes that are visibly changing and disappearing. Glaciers make planetary transformation tangible: local movements of ice and water are closely linked to global processes such as rising sea levels and shifting ecosystems, which also affect low-lying regions such as Belgium.
From early March to early April 2026, three Icelandic artists – Julie Sjöfn Gasiglia, Vala Sigþrúðar Jónsdóttir and Sigrún Gyða Sveinsdóttir – will be in residence at C-TAKT in Pelt, where they develop new work and research in dialogue with scientists and fellow artists. Their stay is accompanied by a programme of encounters in Belgium, including meetings with researchers from De Jonge Academie and the Royal Academy for Science and the Arts of Belgium, participation in the Belgian Science for Climate Action conference, and visits to artists and institutions. The residency follows an earlier phase of the project in February at SÍM Residency in Reykjavík, where Belgian artists Mattias De Craene, Stijn Demeulenaere and Kevin Trappeniers undertook fieldwork in glacier landscapes together with glaciologists from the University of Iceland.
These artistic and scientific exchanges generate both artistic and research material. Field measurements gathered during glacier expeditions – including data collected by scientists involved in the European research project ICELINK (Advancing Knowledge of North Atlantic Land Ice Linking Observations and Models), which studies the impact of climate change on glaciers in Iceland and Greenland – feed into the project alongside the artists’ findings. Around twenty-five researchers affiliated with De Jonge Academie will write short essays inspired by these observations. In May, artists and scientists will meet at BAC Art Lab in Leuven for a public exchange, and later this year the project will be featured in EOS Science Magazine. The residencies form the first step towards a larger collaborative project between the participating artists and scientists.