Isfjord (Icefjord), conditions over night, dig. photo, Spitsbergen, May 2018
Artistic research, Svalbard, 2018
When everyone is at sleep at night there is still light. Alongside my function as an officer on a sailing vessel I try to find time to capture the transience of the polar region with film and photography. When I am at watch I look for former claims and traces of exploitation in the hard to access polar land. I collect materialised footage, archeological, geological and ecological research as provided at the Arctic Centre, University of Groningen. I was invited to obtain more knowledge.
Apart from ecological change I am interested in ownership, heroism and vulnerability, especially related to human presence in wild nature. The great imagery of man, adventures, manufactured sites, flags, hopes and downfalls as traces in the landscape provide proof of what had happened.
In my own work I reflect with my own adventurous desires, hopes and poetic mind by re-framing again the leftover, regained wilderness with installations or small acts by making compositions in the landscape with locally found elements. These are both from natural and industrial resources. My aim is to emphasise the land its own space and ownership. While working especially in this region I am also claiming my own space as an artist, sailor and a woman, years behind the presence of man.
Miners at Svea coal mine, photo early 20th century, LA SHIPA; History of Large Scale Resource Exploitation in Polar Areas, 2012
Traces of coal mine industry, Russian (former Dutch) station, Barentsburg, Spitsbergen, May 2018
At coal mine no. 5, installation h. 1.85 m, buoy, rope, hose, steel,
Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen, June 2018
At the bottom of a deserted mine I connected a buoy, found in the Barents sea, to an iron beam that put out from the landscape. It subtly enhances its own marked space
Movement of ice landscapes, sketches by prof. M.J.J.E. Loonen, ecologist, Arctic Center University of Groningen; their research station is based at 78° N, Ny-Ålesund, Spitsbergen