Kristina Chan is a Canadian artist whose work oscillates between photography and printmaking and the science – and artistry – behind mark-making. Fascinated by the relationship between these two processes, Chan explores their ties to site-specificity and truth, to memory, time and space.
The second artist in The Sunderland Collection’s acclaimed Art Programme, the rare nineteenth-century “Blue China” terrestrial and celestial wall maps in the collection were at the forefront of Chan’s mind when recently embarking upon two epic journeys to distinct locations. During trips to the Arctic Circle via the Svalbard Channel and the Nevada Desert, Chan experienced extremes in landscape and climate that recalled Claudius Ptolemy’s system of climes. First described by Aristotle, who divided the world into five zones: two frigid regions near the poles, an uninhabitable torrid zone at the equator, and two temperate regions; at the time, only the temperate zones were believed habitable.
Chan’s long fascination with the mapmaking process and the tools used to chart the land, seas, and skies — in her words, “the systems and scales we apply to the world”— informs the work throughout Habitable Climes and explores the importance of holding multiple ways of experiencing, knowing, and relating to the earth.
The Sunderland Collection Art Programme, launched in 2024, is curated by Beth Greenacre. The Sunderland Collection is a private collection of exquisite cartographic objects from the 13th to the early 19th centuries. Through its unique art programme and podcast, as well as conferences and collaborations, the Sunderland Collection champions craftsmanship and creativity.
