Is there a visual language of Antarctica?

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Is there a visual language of Antarctica?

This was one of my original questions.

Alberto Morales painted the “visual silence” he experienced in Antarctica with minimalist tones and compositions. Elsewhere I have seen minimalist tones and compositions – in the paintings of Jorg Smeisser, Stephen Eastaugh, and others. Here I see it also in the paintings of Marina Curci, and in the video installations of Andrea Juan, Philip Dadson. A minimalist representation of Antarctic landscape has become iconic. It accords with the experience of most of us.

Antarctica provides the physical space for individual representation and interpretation; we connect with its landscape physically, emotionally, intellectually and aesthetically.

Upon this minimalist ‘tabla rasa’ appear recurring visual metaphors. With meanings particular to those inhabiting that landscape, their images reflect some shared experience:

Hut – (Antarctic Village – no borders); the home (Eastaugh’s Headhome)
Head – (Boissonet’s Calvicia [toma de conciencia d Atlas]); the home (Eastaugh’s Headhome)
The body – (Lorrainee Beaulieu’s Bander#1, #2, #3)
the Map – as woman (Lorrainee Beaulieu’s Bander#1, #2, #3)

.

I have observed, read about, and experienced directly, different readings of the landscape features of Antarctica:

Melting berg – letting go; release
Turning berg – one’s own life story; a life change or transition
Calving berg – birth; death; loss; abandonment

The life forms trapped within the ice interest me particularly – the frozen life of once free planktons.

Floating planktons – freedom; destiny; the universal unconscious

Karin Beaumont’s work inspires this interest. Her wearable art dovetails the human form with Antarctic marine life forms. This reflects her own connection to Antarctica, through her art and science. As a scientist she studied zooplanktons under a microscope, and was moved to share her knowledge of their plight through art.

Virginia King’s Antarctic Heart brings diatoms into the human dimension, suspended as a gallery installation.

Seeking meanings within myself, to connect with the frozen forms in ice, I find my father’s death, and the danger of our home planet. It’s so obvious really, but it took time, and coming to London, to feel the grief.

I begin with a drawing (above), to release the life. I drew the original sketch for this in Buenos Aires, on seeing a painting by Wilfredo Lam (b. Cuba 1902, D. Paris 1982), in the Malba gallery: La mana verde o le matin vert o Toi, mon regard o Foret vierge [The green Morning or you, My gaze or Virgin Forest], 1943

The title suggests choices between people and the natural world, yet in the painting they unite.

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Posted on Friday, March 14th, 2008