The Northlandia Castle (mountaintop)

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
 
During the Arctic Circle residency, we hiked up a steep ridge of ice and rocks at Treshold Bay, Svalbard and saw the top of Hornsuntinden peak in spectacular sunset. 
 
I never needed my gloves until the morning when we hiked up that ridge. My Canada Goose jacket was amazingly designed, and my hands were warm 90% of the time just hiding inside the sleeves! My hands went numb after five minutes of photo-taking.  
 
At midday, we saw the most spectacular sunrise on top of the ridge, the mountain we saw the previous day. 
 
I put Northlandia’s castle on top of that mountain, shrouded in the glorious light I experienced. 
 
The castle windows inspired by the triangular shapes in the ice. I first saw shapes like this on a building when I got off the train in Oslo, at the very beginning of this trip. I was already transfixed on the train platform, completely blown away by the irregular windows and frantically planning how to incorporate them into the castles and houses in Northlandia. 
 
I re-encountered these shapes in the uninhabited Svalbard wilderness. Those windows in Oslo make so much more sense! I kept seeing these irregular triangular shapes in the frozen rivers. They were more perfect than anything I could think of!
 
**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.