Susan Pearson, who is in her final year of the MA Contemporary Art and Archaeology, is in Norway after being selected for the 2026 Brig∂i Residency – a Shetland-to-Norway artist exchange supporting research, connection, and creative development and led by Gaada.
Based in Whalsay, Susan’s practice is deeply embedded in Shetland’s material, cultural, and folkloric landscape. Her work draws on archaeology, local heritage, and ecology, incorporating foraged and gifted materials including seaweed, soil, driftwood, sheep’s wool, and salvaged machine parts.
Through her residency, Susan will research ideas of hybridity, transformation, and “becoming-with”, inspired by the writing of Donna Haraway. Building on her recent creation of hybrid homunculus figurines from foraged Shetland clay, she will explore how human and non-human elements co-exist, tangle, and mutate. She describes these entangled lines as a paes-wisp, a Shetland dialect word for a knotted, ravelled mass of threads.
Previous recipients of the artist-exchange include Oslo-based Miriam Sentler, who travelled to Shetland from Norway for a residency in 2023. Miriam was hosted by Associate Professor Antonia Thomas at UHI Orkney as part of the British Council EARTH Scholarship scheme in 2025.
