ARCTIC VOICES
Abraham Anghik Ruben
Study for Arctic Apocalypse
ARCTIC VOICES
November 7th - February 23rd, 2025
The New Bedford Art Museum in partnership with the New Bedford Free Public Library and Look North Gallery presents: Arctic Voices, an exhibition representing artistic responses to the arctic region across time and cultures. The exhibition offers a range of perspectives from 19th century explorers/artists, Inuit and indigenous peoples of the Arctic region and 21st century contemporary artists. Consider how the competing ideas throughout history motivate artists’ investigations and shape their approach to the landscape and representations of culture.
Discover philosophically contrasting world views of human’s relationship to the natural world and shifting attitudes towards conservation as portrayed in sculptures, paintings, prints, glass, photography, and other media.
Renowned explorer/painter and New Bedford native son William Bradford made six expeditions to the Arctic between 1861-1866. The exhibition includes a selection of his sketchbooks and photographs from some of those expeditions as well as several oil paintings he made upon his return.
Betsey Biggs
Melt: The Memory of Ice
Betsey Biggs is a composer and studio artist based in Boulder, Colorado. Their work connects the dots between music, sound, visual art, place, storytelling, and technology, and has been described by The New Yorker as “psychologically complex, exposing how we orient ourselves with our ears.” Over the years Biggs wrote a book, worked as a video editor and producer, composed string quartets and multimedia operas, created big participatory art projects, earned a Ph.D. in music composition at Princeton University, and taught music, multimedia, public art, and video at Brown University, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the University of Colorado, where they currently serve as Assistant Professor. Biggs has given talks about their work at Harvard, the New Museum, and lots of other wonderful places.
MELT: the memory of ice is a 74-minute visually stunning and immersive music-film by Betsey Biggs, an invitation to sit bedside in communion with our earth’s body melting and spilling through climate change. Created during a summer the director spent in Greenland with her mother and 5-year-old daughter, the film slowly explores a spectacular river of icebergs, increasingly interrupted by flashes of memories of the north. A musical drone rich with glimmers of sound — calving ice, reindeer bells, sled dogs — surrounds the spellbinding vocal ensemble Moving Star and a solo child chanting an unfathomable list of winter’s loss — flurries, orca, snow angels. The ice melts on.
As I struggle to give my child the same intimacy with the wild I’ve enjoyed, I have found myself fascinated by a primary element of climate change: melting ice. This is my first feature film; I made it after wandering around the world’s most active glacier with my mother and 5-year-old daughter. There are so many documentaries about the facts and figures of climate change out there, and I wanted to offer audiences a glimpse at the experience I had in Greenland — the chance to simply sit, in the tradition of slow cinema, and be with the earth’s ice as it melts and spills its way through climate change, to witness their own feelings as music washes over them.
Lene Tangen
Glacier's End
Lene Charlotte Tangen (b. 1971) is a Norwegian glass artist. Lene began her career working with ceramics as a medium for helping women immigrants transition to living in Copenhagen. In her twenties she traveled extensively as a stewardess for Scandinavian airlines, lived in several countries and studied Ayurvedic medicine in Sri Lanka.
A glassblowing class in 2002 ignited a passion, that led Lene to pursue a career as a full-time glass artist.
She graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Art in Bornholm in 2011 and moved back to her native Norway in 2014, longing for the cold winters and ice-covered landscapes. There she set up her own casting and cold-working studio.
Her work has been exhibited at the The European Museum for Contemporary Glass in Germany, at shows such as SOFA Chicago and Collect London and most recently at the National Museum in Oslo in 2023. In 2021 she was awarded a ten-year working grant from the Norwegian government.
She lives near Oslo in a house in the forest with her two daughters, Serine and Lilje. Surrounded by wildlife, she enjoys the peace of snow and frost most of the year.
Glass artist Lene Charlotte Tangen`s main inspiration is the Arctic environment and the ecological consequences of global warming. Tangen`s work has a clear relationship to this theme. She tries to recreate the structure, form and materiality of the ice, freezing a specific moment in a process of constant change. In this way she seeks to preserve something that will soon be lost, freezing the imprint and perpetuating it by integrating it into the glass sculptures.
Tangen specializes in cast sculptural glass, using a technique similar to bronze casting, cire perdue. The glass is melted in casting molds, cut, grinded and processed by the artist herself. She explores the qualities of the material glass, experimenting and pushing it to its outer boundaries. She wants the sculptures to evoke associations, and wants to freeze the viewer's time, if only for a moment.
In 2016, Tangen took part in an Arctic expedition from the archipelago off Spitsbergen, the Arctic Circle, organized by The Farm Inc. in the US. Here she got close to her source of inspiration, taking impressions of the drift ice and the surface of the glaciers, which she incorporates when sculpting in clay, then in wax before casting in glass. When the glass is annealed, cold worked and polished, these imprints of the Arctic are frozen and preserved in her glass sculptures.
Viktor Iadne
Snowshoe Boy
Born in 1971, Nenets artist, Viktor Fedorovich Iadne is recognized as the People's Master of the Russian Federation. He and his wife, Inna Iadne, are craftspeople renowned for their exceptional, intricate carvings. As a member of both the Union of Artists of Russia and the Creative Union of Artists, Viktor has achieved master status in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District. His artistry goes far beyond technical skill, embodying a deep connection to his Indigenous Nenets heritage and the spiritual traditions of his ancestors. Viktor's choice of materials, such as mammoth tusk, ebony and bone, enhances the symbolic nature of his work, which is celebrated for its intricate detail and profound cultural meaning.
Viktor’s creations often weave together European, Asian, and Yakut traditions with shamanistic spirituality, resulting in pieces that reflect his unique worldview. One of his most renowned works is a carving of the Spirit of the Ocean, represented as a whale emerging from otherworldly realms. This piece, crafted from mammoth tusk and resting on an ebony base, symbolizes Viktor's reverence for nature and the spiritual forces that protect it. His art frequently serves as a conduit for blessings and protection, especially for natural elements like water, which is central to the Nenets culture.
Despite his global recognition, Viktor's heart remains tied to his remote homeland, where he has used his work to preserve and share the Indigenous traditions of the Yamal region. His art acts as a storyteller, preserving the voices and customs of his ancestors for future generations.
Amid the turmoil of Russia's war on Ukraine, Viktor and his family sought asylum in New York City, leaving behind their homeland and the legacy they had built in the Russian Federation. The conflict forced them to start over in a foreign land, navigating the challenges of rebuilding their lives and careers in America. Despite the upheaval, Viktor continues to create art that reflects his deep-rooted connection to his Indigenous culture, now blending it with the resilience and hope that comes from forging a new path in an unfamiliar world. His family’s journey stands as a testament to their strength and commitment to their artistic and cultural heritage.
Abraham Anghik Ruben
Study for Arctic Apocalypse
Born in 1971, Nenets artist, Viktor Fedorovich Iadne is recognized as the People's Master of the Russian Federation. He and his wife, Inna Iadne, are craftspeople renowned for their exceptional, intricate carvings. As a member of both the Union of Artists of Russia and the Creative Union of Artists, Viktor has achieved master status in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District. His artistry goes far beyond technical skill, embodying a deep connection to his Indigenous Nenets heritage and the spiritual traditions of his ancestors. Viktor's choice of materials, such as mammoth tusk, ebony and bone, enhances the symbolic nature of his work, which is celebrated for its intricate detail and profound cultural meaning.
Viktor’s creations often weave together European, Asian, and Yakut traditions with shamanistic spirituality, resulting in pieces that reflect his unique worldview. One of his most renowned works is a carving of the Spirit of the Ocean, represented as a whale emerging from otherworldly realms. This piece, crafted from mammoth tusk and resting on an ebony base, symbolizes Viktor's reverence for nature and the spiritual forces that protect it. His art frequently serves as a conduit for blessings and protection, especially for natural elements like water, which is central to the Nenets culture.
Despite his global recognition, Viktor's heart remains tied to his remote homeland, where he has used his work to preserve and share the Indigenous traditions of the Yamal region. His art acts as a storyteller, preserving the voices and customs of his ancestors for future generations.
Amid the turmoil of Russia's war on Ukraine, Viktor and his family sought asylum in New York City, leaving behind their homeland and the legacy they had built in the Russian Federation. The conflict forced them to start over in a foreign land, navigating the challenges of rebuilding their lives and careers in America. Despite the upheaval, Viktor continues to create art that reflects his deep-rooted connection to his Indigenous culture, now blending it with the resilience and hope that comes from forging a new path in an unfamiliar world. His family’s journey stands as a testament to their strength and commitment to their artistic and cultural heritage.
The Inuit believed in the existence of the Soul in all living things. The concept of reincarnation was central to family and community beliefs.
As a vigorous group of Arctic people, the Inuit came from west to east in wave after wave of nomadic bands in search of new land and game. With the re-curved Asiatic bow and toggle harpoon they hunted sea and land mammals. They traveled by kayak and umiak in summer and by dog team in winter.
The Inuit Shaman acted as mediator between the world of man, animals, and the spirit world. He was the keeper of Inuit stories, myths and legends …the repository of knowledge of the land and the secret worlds.
The Viking Norse came into North America by way of migrations from their Scandinavian homelands through the British Isles, Ireland and the Northern Islands, Iceland and then Greenland. They had highly developed religious, spiritual, and cultural beliefs and artistic traditions.
The Viking Norse had a mythological landscape inhabited by gods and goddesses, giants, monsters and demons. Their sagas speak of their Shamanic beliefs.
In Iceland, as a Greenland, the Viking Norse gave names to places and things that held power in their imagination. They used the spirit names of the mountain, river, stream, valley and forest – protective spirits and malevolent ones as well.
My sculptures portraying Viking Norse myths, stories and legends have Norse decorative lines and motifs. These are designs that I have adapted and changed to enhance the visual impact and to convey the sense of belonging to that place and time.
As a storyteller, I have sought to bring life to these ancient voices from a time when these two northern people held a reverence for the land and for all living things therein that provided sustenance and survival.
Zaria Forman
Fellsfjara, Iceland, no. 17, 2022
Soft pastel on paper
10" x 12 3/4"
Zaria Forman documents climate change with pastel drawings. She travels to remote regions of the world to collect images and inspiration for her work, which is exhibited worldwide. She has flown with NASA on several Operation IceBridge missions over Antarctica, Greenland, and Arctic Canada. She was featured on CBS Sunday Morning, CNN, PBS, and BBC. She delivered a TEDTalk, and spoke at Amazon, Google, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, exhibited in Banksy’s Dismaland, and was the artist-in-residence aboard the National Geographic Explorer in Antarctica. Forman curated the first ever, permanent, polar art exhibitions aboard Lindblad Expeditions National Geographic Endurance and the National Geographic Resolution. Her works have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal, and the Smithsonian Magazine. Forman currently works and resides in upstate New York, and is represented by Winston Wächter Fine Art in New York, NY and Seattle, WA.