Giant Puffins at Northlandia’s Southern Border

Hand pulled original Woodcut Print (oil-based ink on handmade cloud dragon rice paper)
Paper size: 8x10” / 20x25cm
Image size: 6x8.75” / 15x22cm
2022
Editions of 100 + 5AP
unframed
USD 150
 
The Ice Queen (a polar bear ice sculpture) has a lot on her hands. With half the country's glaciers gone and its permafrost shifting, the Ice Queen is desperate to close Pandora's box. To slow down temperature warming, she has hundreds of giant puffins at the southern border blowing the rising warm air southward around the clock.
 
This was my first woodblock in Svalbard. The background mountains are Nordenskioldfjellet Summit just on the outskirt of Longyearbyen, the world’s northernmost town. For my first five days in town, I had a spectacular view of the summit in my window. I was also super lucky to have hiked it and have reached the top during the short 30 minutes in full sunlight. 
 
By the time we had returned to Longyearbyen from our two-week arctic boat expedition, it had gotten too dark to hike. The one day my friend planned to take us hiking was rainy and wet. 
 
As our trip leader said, this is the arctic. Do it now or it may never happen. 
 
*There are also no puffins in Svalbard, but the puffins I saw in Iceland back in 2013 left such a strong impression on me. I was at the Listhus residency, Ólafsfjörður, Iceland for a month. During the month, I took a ferry to Grimsey, a remote island within the arctic circle. It’s home to fewer than 100 people but over one million seabirds, including the famous puffins. I will never forget the cliffs spotted with all the puffins and the very long commute (over 6 hours of round trip from the residency and I had to hitchhike back) and it took me two trips to get there.
 
**Each print is original, hand-pulled and may look slightly different from the image sample.
 
 
About Northlandia Arctic Woodcuts
 
In Oct-Nov 2022, I went on a month-long research residency programme “The Arctic Circle” in the arctic Svalbard for Northlandia, one of the five imaginary countries in my lifelong World of 2084 project. During the trip, I sketched landscape on site on small woodblocks and weaved Northlandia narrative into the composition and carve the woodblocks on the boat and in my room in Longyearbyen, the world’s northernmost town.
 
The collection of 24 Northlandia Arctic Woodcuts was then be hand-printed in Hong Kong and launched in December 2022. These small woodcut prints serve as a starting point for larger works (woodcuts and drawings and more) under the Northlandia arctic narrative I will develop over the next decade.
 
 
About Northlandia
 
Northlandia is one of the five imaginary countries in The World of 2084, my lifelong project to portray a futuristic world in the corresponding year.
 
Drawing from diverse sources such as early arctic pioneer history, Inuit and Central American mythology, science fiction and children's literature, literary tradition magical realism and fairy tales, 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.