… no footprints, even.
The history of arctic exploration and polar art abounds with images of sublime wonder, colonial appropriation, and heroic masculinity. Over many centuries, European and North American imagemakers have imagined our planet’s polar regions as timeless zones awaiting bold human deeds in search of meaning and life. Inhospitable and full of hazards, polar landscapes according to this tradition have either served as mere backdrops to individual gestures of bravery and endurance or showcased the folly and fragility of any human endeavor.
The work of Montreal-based artist Jessica Houston unsettles such imagery and asks us to develop new aesthetic approaches to engage with the poles’ icy landscapes. Shown for the first time in this constellation, … no footprints, even. gathers four distinct, yet intricately related bodies of work Houston has produced over the last decade. Though different in scope, medium, and process, Houston’s projects share an impulse to read dominant polar representations and travel narratives against the grain. They ask viewers to consider the deep time of geological processes; to decolonize the visual language of dominant polar art; to imagine alternate modes of polar travel that respect the entangled nature of the human and the non-human; and to investigate momentous resonances between art, science, and spiritualism. Troubled by the impact of human-induced climate change on Earth’s polar regions, Houston’s paintings, collages, photographs, and audio works offer glimpses of what it might take to walk more lightly on this planet.
Co-Curators: Jana Harper and Lutz Koepnick
Managing Curator: Rachel P. Kreiter