The Visit
Single-plate blue and white image
Handpulled woodcut print (oil-based ink on handmade rice paper)
Image size: 30x40cm / 12x16”
Paper size: 40x50cm / 16x20”
Editions of 20 + 2AP
2026
This woodcut print depicts the Ice Queen’s visit to her great great great great great grandmother Mother Spirits for advice after the G4 announces attack on her country Northlandia.
The ice cave was inspired by Longyearbreen, the largest local glacial ice cave around Longyearbyen where I had my arctic residency in Feb 2026. This composition was inspired by the beautiful curves, texture and patterns at the cave’s entrance. The cave is known locally as the cathedral cave for the large space with inverted icicles.
Ice caves are fragile, ephemeral and symbolic of climate change. An ice cave is never the same the following year. Summer meltwater deconstructs the cave and the structure is reformed every fall with snowfall and freezing. Many ice caves are becoming smaller and losing their tops.
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. You can watch some prints that didn't make the "perfect pile" being ripped up.
Completely mesmerized by the Arctic’s blue hour in which the world glows in blue for the entire day between polar night and midnight sun, I ended up making a blue and white image instead of the original black and white plan.
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“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.
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.
