From 2 to 20 October 2024, I stayed aboard tall ship Antigua in Svalbard for the Arctic Circle’s residency programme. It was my second stay in Svalbard in connection with my work. My interest in Svalbard and the Arctic began with a work I made in 2013, The Hyperborean Garden and in the summer of 2018 I stayed in Svalbard for a residency at Galleri Svalbard and, at the invitation of Dr Maarten Loonen, a stay at the Dutch Arctic Station in Ny-Ålesund run by the University’s Arctic Centre. At the time I got into conversation with Maarten Loonen about my visit to Ny-Ålesund, the focus of my plans was still very much in line with the topics that formed the basis for The Hyperborean Garden: the politically charged boreal mythology of the High North.
But in conversations with Maarten Loonen prior to my stay in Ny-Ålesund, we were soon talking about another topic that cannot be avoided when talking about the polar regions: the ecological consequences of climate change in the north. He had seen first-hand the pace and effects of climate change during the 25 years he spent at the Dutch polar station for his research on the barnacle goose. Partly because of these conversations, my interests began to shift from political mythology to ecology.
The most extensive work to emerge from this stay in Ny-Ålesund is a series of 20 large drawings entitled HÖLL. It is a transhistorical work in which a famous story from Dutch maritime history, The Wintering on Nova Zembla, is extrapolated to the here and now to portray both the geopolitical and ecological complexities of the Arctic. Besides that I have also made a series of drawings referring to the legacy of mining in Svalbard and, with graphic designer Simon Davies, created a publication following the work HÖLL.
What is barely touched upon in all these drawings, however, is the incredible landscape of Svalbard. In HÖLL the landscape is defined mostly by the exploits of the men in these drawings and hardly in the way it presents itself to us. It is a landscape that resonated deeply in me and in everyone who sees it and that is is something I wanted to address ever since I came back from that first trip to Svalbard and my trip to Greenland in 2019.
So I have participated in the Arctic Circle Residency Program in October 2024 to develop a new series of landscape drawings using the rapidly changing landscape of the far north and the idea of ‘weird ecology’ as a starting point. After my stay aboard the Antigua, I now want to incorporate the impressions and knowledge gained into a number of large-scale landscape drawings which focus on water and ice, portraying landscapes not merely as passive scenery but as entities with agency — or even as actors in their own right. My interest lies in exploring the unsettling idea of nonhuman agency and the fear of monstrosity it evokes.
Reflecting on Mary Shelley’s book Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus, among others, I want to delve into these notions of ‘weirdness’ and ‘monstrosity’ as a way for understanding the intricate and often uneasy relationship between humans (or culture) and nature.
Many thanks to the Antigua crew, to Tuomas Kauko, Sanna Häkkänen, Lars Holt and Sarah Gerats for all their help during our voyage and for keeping us safe and to Aaron T. O’Connor for having me on this trip. I would also like to thank the Mondriaan Fund for their support.