On March 24, please join ASF for a virtual round-table discussion on “Capturing Sustainability in the Arctic” with photographers and artists Marion Belanger, Clare Benson, Marek Ranis, all ASF Fellows, and Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason, whose new novel On Time and Water will be published on March 23. With the rapidly changing landscape of the Arctic, hear how issues related to sustainability and climate change in the region have been captured by creative artists.
The event will take place via Zoom webinar; please register at the link above. Questions can be shared in the chat during the event or emailed in advance to info@amscan.org.
About the Panelists
Marion Belanger photographs the cultural landscape, particularly where geology and the built environment intersect. She is the author of Rift/ Fault, (Radius Books, 2016) with a contributed essay by Lucy Lippard, and Everglades: Outside and Within, with an essay by Susan Orlean (Center for American Places at Columbia College Chicago, 2009). She earned a M.F.A. 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 B.F.A. from the College of Art & Design at Alfred University. Currently the artist is an artist in residence at the Connecticut Agricultural Experimental Station in New Haven where she is making a permanent public art installation with collaborator Martha Lewis. Her work is held in numerous collections including the National Gallery for Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, and the Yale University Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. She has exhibited internationally, and has been honored with numerous awards including a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. Grants from the American Scandinavian Foundation greatly supported Rift/Fault as well as her current work on sustainability in the Arctic. The artist resides in Guilford, Connecticut.
Clare Benson is an interdisciplinary artist and photographer whose work explores themes of family history, tradition, science, and mythology. She received her MFA from the University of Arizona in 2013, and was the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Arctic Sweden in 2014/15, where she began working alongside space scientists and indigenous Sami reindeer herders. In 2017, her monograph The Shepherd’s Daughter was published 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 currently serves as Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Connecticut.
Andri Snær Magnason is one of Iceland’s most celebrated writers. He has won the Icelandic Literary Prize for fiction, children’s fiction, and non-fiction. In 2009, Magnason co-directed the documentary Dreamland, which was based on his book Dreamland: A Self-Help Manual for a Frightened Nation (forthcoming from Open Letter). In 2010, Magnason was awarded the Kairos Prize, presented to outstanding individuals in the field of intercultural understanding. Magnason ran for President of Iceland in 2016 and came third out of nine candidates.
Marek Ranis (PL/USA) is an Associate Professor of Art at the College of Art and Architecture, UNC Charlotte and a multi-media environmental artist. Through film, installation, sculpture, photography, paintings and social practice projects Ranis has been exploring a dramatically changing polar environment, climate migration and the experiences of Arctic Indigenous communities, as well as growing cultural diversity in the Northern regions. He is a recipient of numerous grants, fellowships and residencies, including UNESCO Aschberg Fellowship, American-Scandinavian Foundation Grant and NC Artist Fellowship Award. Ranis presented his work in more than hundred individual and group shows nationally and internationally. His work was recently recognized by United States State Department: his essay about his Arctic experience was included in the book publication Our Arctic Nation as a voice representing North Carolina. Marek is continuing his work in Alaska and Arctic Norway as an artist and a researcher and recently was named a Curator at Large at the Anchorage Museum, Alaska.