Research project Illustrating Neutral Nature
Scientific Depictions of the Arctic from St Petersburg, Stockholm, and Paris.
The aim of this project is to investigate representations of the Arctic during the first major scramble in early 19th century. An investigation of such seemingly neutral items as maps and scientific illustrations of nature will reveal the cultural and colonial underpinnings of the powerful gaze that made the Arctic its object.
Project description
Illustrating Neutral Nature appears self-contradictory, as any illustration is culturally produced, and thus, never fully neutral. And yet, with its floating icebergs in the unpopulated distance, portrayals of the Arctic constantly fall prey to this illusion of neutral, untouched, nature. This project is a comparative study of scientific and artistic illustrations of the Arctic produced on expeditions sent from Paris and Moscow during the early half of the 19th century. Regardless of the many different historical motivations that led to the scramble for the circumpolar north the Arctic as empty and enigmatic, blossomed as an archetypal image, fuelling imaginations for centuries. Considering that the explorations truly exploded in the 19th century, we must first ascertain what visual culture surrounding the Arctic predated the archetype that later emerged.
The overall ambition is to produce knowledge on how seemingly objective scientific illustrations are bound to ideology, aesthetic regimes, cultural nationalism, and colonialism.
Project members
Project managers
Katarina Wadstein MacLeod
Professor
