Northlandia in the Making: A Solo Exhibition by Michelle Fung

Northlandia in the Making presents Northlandia, a fictional country developed by Michelle Fung as part of her long-term project 2084, which she began in 2014. Conceived as an exploration of possible futures, the project imagines five fictional countries (G5)—Contradictoria, Northlandia, Dreamland, the Aristocratic Union, and the Republic of Strata. Following the development of Contradictoria, Fung began developing Northlandia as the project’s second fictional nation. Drawing on her experiences during Arctic residencies in 2022 and 2026, Fung translates observations of landscape, light, climate and time into an imagined world with its own geography, forms of life and social structures.

The title in the Making describes Northlandia as a fictional world still taking shape through the artist’s practice. The works move between observation and invention, between the Arctic as a lived environment and Northlandia as an imagined place. Experimental paintings of Arctic sky and landscape photographs register changing light and color; the newly envisioned map of 2084, presented from Northlandia’s perspective, establishes its geography and impending crisis; characters and stories suggest its histories and relationships; while the original animation woodblocks and theme song, presented here for the first time, give visual and auditory form to the narrative, frame by frame.

The exhibition is organized around four interconnected modes of practice—Observing, Imagining, Making and Continuing—which describe different aspects of the artist’s working process rather than successive stages. Together, they reveal a fictional world that remains open to revision as Fung continues to develop it.

What can a country that does not exist allow us to see about the world we inhabit? At a time when climate, environment and human life are undergoing constant change, can fiction offer another way of understanding reality? Northlandia remains in the making, and this exhibition invites visitors to look from this fictional country back toward the world we inhabit—and to reconsider how we see it.