ON ARTICA

Photographs do not matter much. Being in those photographs is what matters. Being true to oneself and to the subject, and offering them to the public: what matters, really, is to contribute.

With this series, born out of an artist residency aboard a sailing tall ship in the Svalbard archipelago, I engage with a very urgent subject that touches us all, that of climate change and melting ice caps.

My aim was not to document cause and effect but rather to portray what surrounded me, namely the magnificence of a fast-disappearing world. Each image echoes a strong message, as does the video that closes the exhibition, produced in collaboration with scientists from the Italian National Research Center, the Institute of Polar Sciences and their Base Artica in Svalbard.

Despite the Arctic’s remoteness and inscrutability, changes have not gone unnoticed, instead ushering newer means for Man to pillage resources as melting ice packs surrender into the oceans. From fossil fuel extraction to deep sea mining, and from industrial trawlers’ overfishing to latest plans for defiling waters via massive cruising ships, the Arctic has become the last frontier for new reckless and unsustainable exploitation.

As an artist, I am compelled to steer on an obstinate and dissenting course and use my work to call for a reprieve, and to urge for the immediate respect of natural equilibriums upon which our very survival is foreordained.

I invite you to consider these images with responsible eyes, and to go beyond aesthetic. This is the only way for art to exist: to speak to people’s heart and stir up their conscience.

Giulio Rimondi