Ripples: Shifting Realities in the Arctic brings together artists and scientists who explore the profound environmental, cultural and perceptual transformations unfolding across the Arctic today. It reflects on the impacts of climate crisis on snow, ice and glacial landscapes, inviting viewers to consider humanity’s relationship with nature and the cultural significance of northern environments.
Ripples: Shifting Realities in the Arctic brings together artists and scientists who explore the profound environmental, cultural and perceptual transformations unfolding across the Arctic today. It reflects on the impacts of climate crisis on snow, ice and glacial landscapes, inviting viewers to consider humanity’s relationship with nature and the cultural significance of northern environments.
The title Ripples evokes the idea that even subtle shifts can set larger changes in motion. In the Arctic, a small temperature rise can accelerate glacial melt, alter ocean currents, disrupt ecosystems and reshape cultural practices. A ripple effect that expands far beyond its point of origin. These interlinked processes remind us that the Arctic is not an isolated frontier, but a dynamic system whose transformations reverberate across the globe. Ripples can also move in the opposite direction, as collective action, cultural knowledge and scientific collaboration, generating new forms of adaptation, resilience and care.
At its core, Ripples seeks to evoke wonder and responsibility. By integrating scientific insight, artistic imagination and Indigenous perspectives, the exhibition encourages visitors to reflect on the interconnectedness of natural systems, and the ethical implications of environmental change. It challenges us to look beyond the aesthetic surface of melting ice and shifting weather patterns, and to consider our own positions within these planetary processes.
In bringing together these voices and visions, Ripples strengthens and amplifies the message that the future of the Arctic is inseparable from our shared global future.
Curator: Ásthildur Jónsdóttir