Flag for Arctic Sea Ice

This image, “Flag for Arctic Sea Ice” by Andrea Krupp, is based on the Greenlandic flag and imagines the breakup of the Arctic sea ice around Greenland and the impact that will have on the culture and myths of the people of that land.

The artist says: “Even though it is quite ingeniously abstracted, Greenland’s flag “pictures” nature: the massive ice sheet, the sea ice, the low sun. But what happens to this social imaginary of Greenland when the ice sheet is gone? Or when lack of sea ice disrupts age-old cycles and opens up new vulnerabilities? Visual art, through the act of picturing, seeds the social imaginary with new ways of seeing and understanding nature. This in turn shapes how we relate to nature, and so on, in a chain of cultural transmission.”