The Ice Queen and Her Princess Sister

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
 
The Ice Queen is a polar bear ice sculpture and the pillar of Northlandia. With half the country's glaciers gone and its permafrost shifting, the Queen is desperately working with her court to close Pandora's box.
 
She is doing everything she can, training her fat jumpy seal military troop to defend her country, having giant puffins fan off warm air at the southern borders, building giant igloos to shelter the glaciers and even a mountain-size ice-cream maker to cool off the air!
 
She is skeptical of the south and fiercely protective of her land, yet her sister Sedna, a three-horned narwhal, traverses between the north and the south, hoping for diplomatic negotiations.
 
Talk about sibling rivalry and family drama. 
 
The composition is inspired by the numerous floating icebergs I saw on my expedition trip. We had a few zodiac trips amidst floating icebergs. 
The magic of hearing the ice cracking in the setting sun is impossible to convey.
Definitely an experience I’ll remember on my deathbed. 
 
*I was quite surprised by the omnipresent polar bear motif in Longyearbyen. Even though the white ice bears are rarely sighted within the town’s boundary, they are most definitely in the popular consciousness. I saw them EVERYWHERE and that was the moment when I decided such an overpowering motif deserves to be at the top of the food chain in Northlandia as well.
 
** The hair of the Ice Queen’s sister (yet to be named) is inspired by the seaweed I saw at Recherchefjorden. We saw a polar bear there on the same day! 
 
 
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.
 
**Teenage polar bear glacier photo courtesy of Leslie Sobel. Thank you Leslie! xoxo