Auto Italia is pleased to announce our 2026 Participation Artist-in-Residence, Rose Nordin.

In partnership with Praxis for migrants and refugees, Nordin will collaborate with young migrants as co-authors of a new body of work rooted in cultural memory, lived experience, and ancestral knowledge.

Responding to escalating anti-immigration rhetoric, Nordin and the youth collaborators will co-create scent-based and printed objects, talismanic forms, and other sensory artworks that trace migratory journeys and uncover shared histories. Through collaborative workshops, folklore, conversation, and experimentation, the project provides a space for reflection, exchange, and the celebration of migrant voices as central to the cultural, social, and civic fabric of our shared society.

The body of work will be developed over the next six months, alongside a public programme of events, talks, and training, culminating in a public presentation in November.

The Participation Artist-in-Residence Programme is commissioned and produced by Auto Italia, with support from The National Lottery Community Fund and Arts Council England.

Rose Nordin is a British–Malay research-based artist and graphic designer from London. Her practice examines publication and other instigations of knowledge production through installation, print, metalwork, and emergent olfactory forms. She traces how materials carry systems of governance, devotion, and ecological imagination.

With a focus on Southeast Asian archipelagic and speculative thinking, her research follows the migration of botanical and animal specimens through colonial trade routes between Southeast Asia and Europe.

Rose is based between Kuala Lumpur and London and is a Fellow at the Centre for Art and Design Research. She is currently engaged in the British Council Connections Through Culture initiative with the Malaysian Design Archive and is exhibiting at Traces as part of the Toronto Design Festival.