On February 4, please join ASF for a conversation with artists Marion Belanger, Clare Benson, and Steve Giovinco, whose works are currently featured in the exhibition, On the Arctic Edge: Artists Explore the Far North at Scandinavia House.

Moderated by photographer Erika Larsen, the discussion will examine the individual experiences and work of each artist, as well as the broader perspective the exhibition brings as a collective reflection on the rapidly changing landscape of the Arctic region.

About the Speakers

Clare Benson is a photographer and interdisciplinary artist whose work explores themes of family history, tradition, science, and mythology. She received her MFA from the University of Arizona and her BFA from Central Michigan University. In 2014-15 she was the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Arctic Sweden, where she worked alongside space scientists and indigenous Sami reindeer herders. Her first book The Shepherd’s Daughter was published in 2017 by Photolucida, in receipt of the Critical Mass Book Award. Benson’s work has been featured in exhibitions, screenings, and publications across the U.S. and internationally. She is currently Assistant Professor of Photography at the University of Connecticut.

Marion Belanger is interested in the concepts of persistence and change, and in the way that boundaries demarcate difference, particularly in regard to the land. She has been the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a John Anson Kittredge Award, an American Scandinavian Fellowship, Connecticut Commission on the Arts Fellowships, and has been an artist in residence at the MacDowell Colony, at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, at the Virginia Center for the Arts and at Everglades National Park. Marion Belanger earned her MFA from the Yale University School of Art where she was the recipient of both the John Ferguson Weir Award and the Schickle-Collingwood Prize, and a BFA from the College of Art & Design at Alfred University. Her photographs are included in many permanent collections including the Library of Congress, the National Gallery of Art, the Yale University Gallery of Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art and the International Center of Photography.

Steve Giovinco is a New York City-based fine-art photographer, who focuses on creating images of couples with himself and lyrical night landscapes. His work is collected by many museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, has exhibited widely in galleries and received his MFA from Yale University School of Art. His new photo series Inertia looks at the land, ice and communities in Southern Greenland including the tiny remote town Narsarsuaq, population 158, which lies in the shadow of glaciers.

Erika Larsen is a transdisciplinary storyteller who believes that photography is a practice to expand our understanding of time, place, and people. She is fascinated by how we communicate with nature and often focuses on learning from people who maintain strong relationships with the natural world. Her monograph, Sami-Walking with Reindeer, reflects her time living in the Scandinavian Arctic. Her second monograph, Materia Prima, is a collection of photographs and poems that explore ritual and the process of remembering we are nature. Her work has been included in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, National Geographic Society, Fotografiska Museum, University of Kentucky Art Museum, and the United States Embassy in Oslo. Erika is a lecturer at The Peruvian University of Applied Sciences in Lima, Peru.