Kristina Chan

Kristina Chan is a Canadian-born, London-based artist working across photography and printmaking. Her practice explores the relationship between image-making and cartography, examining how systems of navigation, measurement, and visual recording shape our understanding of memory, territory, and truth. Inspired by post-impressionism, Japanese print traditions, and contemporary photography, Chan’s work considers the tensions between empirical documentation and subjective interpretation of landscape, often responding to archives, instruments, and mapped frameworks to reveal their inherent limitations.

Chan’s practice is deeply rooted in research-led fieldwork and material experimentation. Through site-specific investigations, she navigates the tension between objective observation and interpretive ambiguity. Her approach often incorporates early photographic processes and printmaking techniques, allowing her to blur the boundaries between scientific recording and artistic expression.

Her recent exhibition, Habitable Climes (2025), reflects on early geographical divisions of the Earth into “frigid,” “temperate,” and “torrid” zones. Research trips to the Arctic Circle and the Nevada Desert informed a body of photographic and print works that question the authority of maps and the shifting nature of recorded space, exploring how landscapes, omissions, and human interpretation shape our understanding of territory.

The exhibition was developed in response to The Sunderland Collection, a significant private archive of historic maps, globes, atlases, and books of knowledge dating from the 13th to the early 19th century. The collection showcases the evolution of cartographic practice and the visual languages used to represent both terrestrial and celestial worlds, revealing how early mapmakers blended empirical observation with artistic interpretation to chart unknown places, frame discoveries, and communicate cultural ideas of space and exploration.

Chan holds an MA in Print from the Royal College of Art and a BFA from Parsons Paris School of Art and Design. She has exhibited internationally, including at the Musée du Louvre as part of the 5th Annual Exposure Award Black & White Collection. Additional exhibitions and presentations include the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Academy of Arts, Tate Modern, and other major institutions in the UK and abroad.

Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Ingram Collection of Modern British and Contemporary Art, the Royal Collection, and the Royal College of Art.