Artist in residence: Jessie Kleemann

Jessie Kleemann is a Greenlandic Inuit artist based in Copenhagen. She is currently undertaking an Artist Residency in collaboration with the National Maritime Museum and Royal Holloway, University of London.

About the residency

Kleemann's interdisciplinary practice spans performance, installation and film, exploring Kalaallit Inuit culture, language and relationship to land and sea. Her project centres on maritime traditions, focusing on the qajaq (the “man’s boat”) and the umiaq (the open “woman’s boat”).

The core research phase of the residency will take place at the museum in May–June 2026, focusing on collections-based research, artistic development and public engagement. This will be complemented by fieldwork in Greenland and further collaborative development, both in the UK and abroad.

Video courtesy of Christian Brems

Kleemann brings a substantial international exhibition history to the residency. Her recent and ongoing projects include presentations at La Biennale de Québec (2026) and Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art (Denmark, 2026). In 2023, she held a major solo exhibition, Running Time, at SMK (National Gallery of Denmark), alongside international exhibitions including EXPOSURE: Native Art and Political Ecology (USA) and NORTH (Iceland, Norway, USA). 

Working across performance and moving image, her practice addresses environment, identity, and Indigenous knowledge systems, with works such as Running Time, MASK and Arkhticós Dolorôs. 

Her work has been shown widely across Europe and North America, and she is the recipient of the Eckersberg Medal (2024), the Carl Nielsen Award (2024) and a three-year grant from the Danish Arts Foundation (2023).

Project supporters

‘Oceanic Connections’ is a collaboration between Royal Holloway, University of London and the National Maritime Museum, and is funded through the wider CoastARTS project, in which the Museum is an Associate Partner. The focus of ‘Oceanic Connections’ is to develop environment-related and performance-based artistic expressions through a research residency.

CoastARTS is led by Professor Helen Gilbert (Royal Holloway, University of London) and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in collaboration with national councils in Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Norway. The project runs for three years (until early 2028) and investigates the potential role of performance-based arts in understanding how local communities learn about and respond to ecological crises. This residency as artist-led initiative is curated by Dr Bergit Arends.