Emilia Sølvsten

My name is Emilia Sølvsten (1996), and I am a visual artist working with movement, sculpture and writing. My work examines the fantasies that arise from the distance between me and my Greenlandic heritage – fantasies that often romanticise and simplify complex realities into stereotypes. This reduction can manifest as harmful or violent, evoking longing, naivety, absurdity, sadness and, most profoundly, a sense of loss. How does loss materialise? By examining inherited traumas and their impact on daily life, I seek to understand how personal experiences intersect with collective phenomena and how heritage shapes cultural identities.

During my residency, my focus is on the qivittoq – a mythological Greenlandic figure representing exile, detachment and transformation. This mountain wanderer serves as a lens to examine emotions such as shame, anger and loneliness. My interpretation is highly personal rather than historical, acknowledging the countless variations of the legend. Through writing, snow sculpting and collective gatherings, I will explore the qivittoq as it moves through thresholds – between nature and humanity, solitude and community, life and death. Inspired by my family history and societal taboos surrounding loss and isolation, I aim to use storytelling to explore shared human thresholds.

This writing will also guide my sculptural investigation on-site, which will further embody these ideas by crafting ephemeral snow beings that momentarily transform and inhabit the landscape.  These sculptures reflect the abstraction and transience of the qivittoq, symbolising the act of “passing through” – crossing from one existence to another, briefly inhabiting the space before returning to the earth, much like the qivittoq itself.

As my work during the residency evolves, I expect it to take shape in response to the surroundings and histories embedded at the Saari Residence, as well as in response to the other participants. Site-specificity is of great importance to how I work and therefore also to the outcome of my work, which I am excited to share with you in the near future.

Finally, excerpts of my writing will be engraved on sedimentary stones found on-site, leaving traces of my encounters with the qivittoq in the landscape.