Small Projects
Small Projects (Manila/ Tromsø)
Small Projects is an artist-run initiative located in the Norwegian Arctic. It began as a nomadic art and community project in Manila, The Philippines. It is committed to community building, diversity and indigenous perspectives.
The gallery provides a platform for emerging and established artists whose practices engage with local and global issues. Through exhibitions, public programs, and collaborative projects, Small Projects Gallery creates opportunities for dialogue, learning, and meaningful connections across communities in the Arctic, the tropics and beyond
Proposal
Participation in the Polar Tropic section of SWAB Barcelona is particularly meaningful for Small Projects, whose history is rooted in a unique connection between the Arctic and the Tropics. While the gallery is now based in Tromsø, Norway, above the Arctic Circle, its origins lie in Manila, Philippines, one of the world’s major tropical cities.
For this presentation, Small Projects proposes to showcase the photographic practices of Charlie and Dagny Hay and Jet Pascua, whose work explores relationships between landscape, memory, identity, and lived experience. Their practices resonate strongly with the themes underpinning Polar Tropic, which seeks to highlight artistic voices emerging from peripheral, remote, and geographically distinctive regions.
Jet Pascua is a Filipino-Norwegian artist based in Tromsø whose multidisciplinary practice spans sculpture, installation, video, film, performance, photography, drawing, painting and curatorial practice. Grounded in his experience as a migrant living in the Norwegian Arctic, his work explores themes of memory, migration, colonial histories, political violence, diaspora, and belonging. Through personal and collective narratives, Pascua examines how histories of displacement and trauma continue to shape contemporary identities and social realities.
Pascua studied painting at the University of the Philippines before earning a BFA from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and an MFA from the Bergen Academy of Art and Design. He later completed a PhD in Artistic Research at the Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art. He is the founder and curator of Small Projects, an artist-run initiative established in Manila in 2001 and continued in Tromsø since 2011, dedicated to fostering artistic exchange, community engagement, and diverse cultural perspectives. He is also the artistic director for the Møre and Romsdal Art Center.
His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Jakarta Biennale, Helsinki Photo Festival, Unseen Amsterdam, Torrance Art Museum in Los Angeles, and The Drawing Room in Manila.
Dagny Hay is a Norwegian visual artist working primarily with photography and lens-based media. Her practice explores the complex and often invisible relationship between people, technology, and systems of energy. Through images that investigate electricity, infrastructure, and the effects of rapid technological change, Hay reflects on contemporary experiences of impatience, restlessness, and human connection. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Photography from the University of Hertfordshire and has exhibited her work both independently and in collaborative projects, including as part of the artist duo The Hays. Her work is based in Northern Norway and engages with the social and psychological dimensions of everyday life in a technologically driven world.
Charlie Hay is a Swedish and Norway based artist, photographer, and activist whose practice explores personal and political narratives through lens-based media. Often characterized by a dark sense of humor, his work engages themes of vulnerability, mental health, social structures, love, and contemporary politics. Drawing from lived experience, Hay creates images that balance doubt, curiosity, and emotional honesty, using photography as a means to question certainty and examine the complexities of human relationships.
Hay holds an MFA from the Trondheim Academy of Fine Art at NTNU and a BFA in Fine Art Photography from The Sir John Cass School of Art, Architecture and Design in London. Since 2016, he has been editor of Uncertain States Scandinavia, a platform dedicated to lens-based contemporary art through publications, exhibitions, festivals, and artist talks. His work has been exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions in Norway, Sweden, Germany, and Denmark.
Together with Norwegian artist Dagny Hay, he forms The Hays, a collaborative photographic duo investigating intimacy, partnership, and contemporary experiences of love.
