ARCTIC TURNS
Derek Besant. UV latex ink on Mayfair. 192 x 15 x 24 in. 2020.
I grew up with the concept that Canada was this land mass that bordered oceans on three sides — and the long distances between cities, rather than destinations, measured out its geographical psyche. That geography remained an imagined touchstone of identity that was mostly defined by the Northern reaches as what Canada represented to me.
ARCTIC TURNS is a play on words, but it also represents a turning point in my awareness of how this ideal of the wilderness has come under stress and changes due to climate change the past decade. I am watching it dissolve and disappear...
Images of ice storms, uncharted mountain ranges, wild rivers and different tracks left across the delicate tundra as romantic notions, have become politicized evidence that Canada is undergoing heretofore transformations as never before.
I've juxtaposed a binary diptych structure of fragmented text, in both our official languages, embedded into the aerial wilderness landscape below. Although these words potentially begin to align into one possible narrative, their meaning is left between the lines in a way similar to the dichotomy of how different languages might not mean quite the same things... like one country can be made up of many disparate parts.