Leonid Tishkov

ARCTIC DIARY

/ photo, drawings, installation, video /

10. 03. 11 - 10. 04. 11

opening reception: march 10 at 6 p.m.

In September 2010, the artist Leonid Tishkov, together with a group of scientists, writers, musicians and painters, took part in an international expedition, sailing around Svalbard and Spitsbergen, and then north to the Arctic ice edge.

The expedition was organized by Cape Farwell, a London-based charitable organization tasked with raising public awareness of issues related to global climate change and searching for creative solutions to the ongoing ecological crisis. The Arctic has become a battlefield for multinational energy companies, as Russia continues its efforts to "unfreeze the Arctic" in order to add it to its economic interests. Somehow, no one cares to think about the global catastrophe that can result from the exploitation of this incredibly stunning and certainly fragile polar world. This may be the last place on Earth where civilization has not yet destroyed nature's delicate balance.

Artists will not be able to change the current order of things and close the Arctic 'utilization' program, but they can draw people's attention to this problem, to the fact that the glaciers are melting, and that even insignificant snow melt at the Earth's poles will bring about floods, hurricanes, droughts and countless other woes to mankind. Incredible heat and wildfires in the summer, freezing rain in Moscow in the winter, millions of broken trees: all of it is linked, and all of that is the echo of a dying Arctic.

Leonid Tishkov's exhibition is a story of an unbelievably beautiful and magical Arctic world. Miracles can happen in this realm: the moon comes down from the heavens, glistening polar bears walk on ice floats, white clouds bathe in the sea together with blue whales, and delicate icebergs float in the sky. The snow there emits light and the melting glacier calls out to us, humans, whispering "I am still alive":

WORKS FROM THE PROJECT













PHOTOS OF THE EXPOSITION