The Pilgrimage

The Pilgrimage
Hand-pulled woodcut print
( Oil-based ink on Cloud-dragon handmade rice paper)
image size: 30x40cm
paper size : 50x75cm
2026
edition  20 + 2
 
This woodcut print depicts the arduous mountainous journey the Ice Queen takes to visit her great great great great great grandmother Mother Spirits for advice after the G4 announces attack on her country Northlandia. 
 
The landscape was inspired by the Todelan valley where I saw for the first time during a group snowmobile trip. I already knew that WAS the spot for this journey. The trip guide tried to give me a video on our way back in another valley—it was all dark already and the other valley wasn’t the same. (You can see the fail video if you click on the process video.) The footage was useless and my fingers were seriously frostbitten. Luckily, six months later I no longer feel pain in my fingers. 
 
Two weeks later, I’m forever thankful to friend Sarah (who was our leader and expedition guide for our arctic circle residency 2022!) who took me back on her snowmobile to take these shots for this woodcut print and animation (to be finished at the end of 2026!)
 
The arctic is unpredictable. You live around the elements and can never plan everything. We couldn’t confirm the trip until the day before, weather dependent and Sarah’s snowmobile was frozen in ice before! Things we never consider living in the temperate climate.
 
This print was carved with love in the arctic, then printed with an expert technician at Guanlan printmaking base (Shenzhen, China) where I had an artist residency in 2023. 
 
Each colour requires one block, so the piece took seven woodblocks! (I carved nine but ended up not using the one that took the longest to carve—sometimes the creative process is like that!) You can see some of the test prints that got rejected. 
 
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Northlandia is a surreal arctic tale of the precarious balance between human greed and the magical landscape, between the north and the rest of the world and between self-preservation and the rapidly changing climate.
 
“The World of 2084” is my ongoing lifelong interdisciplinary project (2015 - 2084.) The concept revolves around a grand ecotopian / dystopian world of five imaginary countries (G5, the Great Five Industrial Nations): Contradictoria, Northlandia, Dreamland, the Aristocratic Union and the Republic of Strata. Weaving the micro-narratives together, it brings to life a grand narrative of the world in 2084, portraying my imagined futuristic geopolitical world.