How does one recount a dream that came true, yet one that one had never had before? The starting point was the story of a fellow artist, who claimed that glaciers are the skin of Mother Earth – a claim that is probably not true, but is based on the interplay between Arctic nature and global indigenous concepts. Never mind! After all, the similarity between the surface of glaciers and human skin had already been a theme in my 'Glacier Portraits'. The interest in the Arctic that this sparked led me, in 2023, to make contact with the Institute of Geography and Spatial Research at the University of Graz and, subsequently, with the Sermilik research station. The openness of those in charge there, Dr Wolfgang Schöner and Dr Andreas Trügler, to enter into a collaboration between science and art was another stroke of luck.
The artistic approach to research content opens up new perspectives and encourages scientists to question entrenched lines of inquiry. Art can also simplify complex systems and fields; whilst science aims for reproducibility, art allows for an emotional, subjective approach that can be utilised in communicating multifaceted topics.
"Essentially, we all engage in cultural comparison, in which our own culture becomes the yardstick, and the 'other' is subsumed under our own categories and appears to be deficient" ("Indigenous Peoples in Global Society – The Cultural Identity of the Greenlandic Inuit in the Tension between Nature and Culture", Frank Sowa, 2014). Following my stay on Sermilik, I would like to preface my work with this quotation and insights into the cultural and social history of Greenland. For I believe this is the only way in which the Western-trained eye and our system of values can do justice to the inhabitants of Greenland, Kalaallit Nunaat, the 'Land of the People'.