JULIA DE COOKER
SVALBARD | AN ARCTICFICIAL LIFE
exhibition
2nd to 31st of December 2022
Living in Longyearbyen, the world’s northernmost town, is by choice… There is an absolute contrast between the cocoon of modern city life and the wild and hostile arctic that surrounds it.
Svalbard’s inhabitants are well placed to witness climate change. Each year is more worrisome than the previous one. Permafrost is melting, the ice pack no longer solidifies, the rain later and later turning into snow, winter makes itself waited for…
Julia de Cooker | photographer
Julia de Cooker photographs with a 4×5” camera, citing the palette of Dutch painters.
She tells us about inhabiting the Earth and travels to the harshest environments on the planet. She shows the people who live there and how, smiling, casually, they manage to inhabit these strange places.
For this Christmas exhibition, Julia de Cooker shows us a country as white as the Frozen Lake: the archipelago of Svalbard, beyond the Arctic Circle. Occupied only recently by whalers and then miners, Svalbard is the only country in the world that has no ancient tradition.
Julia de Cooker speaks of “the strange normality”: her magnificent images borrow as much from science fiction as from the representation of a virgin nature.
Richard Petit | curator
juliadecooker.com
