NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
I was commissioned to create a series of paintings about climate and the arctic for two permanent exhibitions aboard National Geographic polar passenger ships, curated by Zaria Forman. In 2019, I made three paintings for the exhibition Change on board the Endurance ship. Between 2021 and 2022, I created eighteen works spanning a full deck of the Resolution.
INSTALLATION
CONCEPT
The paintings look at cycles of construction and destruction and are in conversation with the polar regions. They ask what it feels like to live in a world with extreme environmental conditions and shifts.
My focus is on the alchemy of the materials as they play between representation and abstraction. Muddy paint becomes pollution. Cracked ink forms ice. Neon pigments light up the aurora borealis. The white of the canvas blinds as sun on snow. I use temperature, light, and color to feel along the edge of human habitation.
The work looks at a society built into and onto the ice, traveling via ships not unlike those where the paintings are exhibited. Some of the pieces picture resource extraction. In Ice Factory, a parasitic industrial structure grips the ice, draining it and releasing polluted gas and runoff. Other paintings, such as Festival, focus on human ingenuity. A celebration on ice is colored with salted fires. In Opening Night, aerialists perform in the ship’s rigging, under tented Northern Lights. In High-Rise, we see how human structures might accumulate on constricted land mass – stratified and precarious.
The character of the Bard appeared as an entertainer on the ship, hired to sing an elegy for the earth. She is both an opera singer and an oceanic garbage patch. I wrote a poem in her voice, printed it in book form, and exhibited it beside the paintings.
