Hvit

2017

The tundric landscape resists those primary modes of interpretation that the West has inherited from 19th century painting — of landscape as property, the sublime, a lost Eden or a psychological state. Its homogeneity presents little to latch onto. It's no wonder that during the mid-1800s' the Arctic was deemed indescribable, the primary attempts of representation resorting to meteorological tables and scientific illustration. This not only makes the tundra as close as you can get to the 'landscape as is', devoid of human context and ideology — but also, a place where the rare familiar may seem most foreign and out-of-place.

Hvit was made in collaboration with Vika Adutova and with the support of the Going Public grant from Kunsthøgskolen i Oslo. It was shot in the Norwegian tundra on a particular site on the tundric plateau over the course of two weeks at the end of the polar night.