Dominican artist Mario Dávalos has been selected for The Arctic Circle 2027 Art & Science Expedition in Svalbard, gallery Heliconia Projects announced.
The international residency will take place from April 15 to May 1, 2027, in the remote Arctic Ocean archipelago of Svalbard. Dávalos was invited to participate by Aaron T. O'Connor, the founding director of the residency program, to conduct a pictorial investigation contrasting the Caribbean landscape with that of the High Arctic.
Svalbard is a Norwegian archipelago located in the Arctic Ocean, situated roughly midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole. Renowned for its extreme polar climate, vast glaciers, and dramatic seasonal light variations, the territory offers a unique environment where wilderness, ice, and remote geography define the landscape.
Founded in 2009, The Arctic Circle program brings together an annual international cohort of artists, scientists, architects, and educators selected through a competitive open call. Participants live and work together aboard a traditionally rigged sailing vessel outfitted as a floating residence and studio. The vessel navigates High Arctic waters situated just over ten degrees of latitude from the North Pole, where ice, polar light, and the vast scale of the environment function as primary working materials.
Expedition to the Svalbard archipelago
Expeditionary art residencies in high-latitude environments provide creative practitioners with direct exposure to remote wilderness areas. By combining field research, scientific observation, and visual exploration, these programs enable artists to engage with environmental dynamics that are difficult to experience in urban studio settings.
For Dávalos, the residency is not a move toward an unfamiliar landscape, but rather the missing half of a research initiative he has pursued for several years. His recent bodies of work, including Tropicalized and Another Kind of Island, examine what he terms landscapes of the end of the world, exploring environments where beauty is transformed into a tool to aestheticize the decline of nature.
Dávalos said he views the Arctic and the Caribbean as two ends of the same underlying process. He explained that his work grows out of an unresolved personal conflict between holding a Caribbean nationality and possessing an Arctic soul.
The Caribbean region, characterized by tropical climates, island ecosystems, and dense coastal development, presents a stark visual and geographical contrast to the frozen polar environment. Juxtaposing these two contrasting realms allows artists to investigate global patterns of environmental representation and environmental change.
Caribbean and Arctic landscape research
Dávalos said he paints to observe how modern civilizational logic replaces wild nature with a simulated, comfortable, and safe version ready for global consumption. He noted that while tourism is the most visible form of this transformation, it is not the only one, adding that traveling to Svalbard allows him to visit a place where that process of replacement has not yet been fully realized.
Nicole Bainov and Elsa Maldonado, co-directors of Heliconia Projects, said the selection confirms the consistency of an artistic practice that has been gaining growing international visibility.
Bainov and Maldonado said Dávalos has spent years constructing a visual argument regarding nature and its simulation. They noted that the expedition will grant him direct access to one of the few remaining landscapes capable of resisting that logic, expressing confidence that a decisive body of work in his career will emerge from the project.
Gallery endorsement and upcoming exhibitions
Heliconia Projects operates as a visual arts gallery and advisory platform that represents contemporary artists. The gallery focuses on projects that engage with ecological, geographical, and conceptual themes across traditional painting, photography, and multidisciplinary media.
The paintings and photographs produced during the expedition will feed the next stage of Dávalos's artistic production. Heliconia Projects announced that it will present the resulting collection through future gallery exhibition programs, with specific schedules and locations to be announced in due course.
