We really can’t believe this artist’s massive pastel drawings of icebergs in Antarctica aren’t photos
Brooklyn artist Zaria Forman draws huge remote landscapes of larger-than-life Antarctica vistas. But there’s a reason Forman’s work looks so real: She wants to communicate the realities and perils of climate change.
Forman’s newest exhibit, Antarctica, opens at Winston Wächter gallery in Seattle on September 9. She created the collection during a four-week residency on the National Geographic Explorer, where she spent time getting up close and personal with Antarctica’s ice shelves.
“Many of us are intellectually aware that climate change is our greatest global challenge. And yet the problem may feel abstract, the imperiled landscapes remote, says Forman. “I hope my drawings make Antarctica’s fragility visceral to the viewer, emulating the overpowering experience of being beside a glacier.
Some of these masterpieces look straight out of a Game of Thrones set.
The Wall, anyone?
Check out this time-lapse video of Forman’s drawing process.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
Now, Forman’s work is more necessary than ever. In July, a more than one trillion-pound iceberg broke away from the Larsen C ice shelf, an occurrence of “calving” that some scientists think was expedited by climate change.
Meanwhile, Antarctica’s waters are projected to warm 0.4 degrees Celsius by 2099. That small change puts the habitats of cold water invertebrates at risk, and that loss could reverberate around our ecosystem.
Hopefully with Forman’s work, more people can become aware of how even subtle changes in the climate can have big ramifications. And icebergs of Antarctica, though they seem impossibly far away, can eventually affect the way we live here.