From South Pole to North Pole is an ongoing exhibition that delves into a fascinating art journey to the extremes of the earth, namely Svalbard and Antarctica, as it is related through the experiences of the artists themselves who have lived through it and created art from it.
This is part of the Taiwanese American Art Council’s (TAAC) Eco Art on Island, a series of exhibitions in which artists, curators, medical professionals, and environmental experts respond to island and terrestrial ecologies. The exhibitions will be running through early November in House 17 on Governors Island and is free to the public.
Eco Art on Island, in association with Tenri Culture Institute, invites artists to observe, experience, and respond to island ecologies through cross-disciplinary creative practice, recognizing that no one is external to the social, cultural, and ecological systems shaping today’s climate crisis.
Recently I met with artists Marisa De Las Nieves Delgado and Jia-Jen Lin for interesting conversations about their exhibitions.
Marisa De Las Nieves Delgado
How Antarctica Chose Her
MARISA DE LAS NIEVES DELGADO, the first woman born in Antarctica shows where she was born on Esperanza base. Photo by Kaju Roberto.
In Antarctica, there are no worlds to divide us, as it is covered by the Antarctica Treaty, an agreement shared between all participating countries which states that this land will only be used for scientific research and exploration.
Throughout history, only been 11 people have been born on the Antarctica continent, the coldest and most inhospitable place on earth. In 1978, Marisa became the first female to born on the Argentine military base of Esperanza where her father was stationed as a scientific team assistant on the Antarctica peninsula. It was his third station to Antarctica, and one where Marisa’s mother reluctantly agreed to accompany him.
Today Marisa travels the world and speaks about how being born at the bottom of the earth has shaped her life philosophy and her relationship to fragile ecosystems. Even in a seemingly uninhabitable and harsh place, life finds a way to flourish.
Facilities in Antarctica
Marisa told me that in 1978, there was only one building on base which served as a medical facility staffed by one doctor. In 1979, a fire destroyed that building. It has since been rebuilt, and there are now several medical facilities with doctors and nurses, a church, a post office, a museum, a school, and even a radio station in Esperanza, which is the only operating radio station on the entire continent.
Antarctica as Art
Marisa explained the relationship between art and Antarctica as the search for truth in silence. Art is a place where we are forced to confront ourselves. Antarctica is like standing in front of a blank canvas, where we confront the infinite — just as when we are standing at the edge of the world in front of the ever-expansive polar landscape. Both challenge us to find beauty where others see emptiness. To find connection where others see isolation — just as the severe winter Antarctica storms sculpt ice into ever-changing forms.
Marisa has expressed that her life has been a bridge between these two worlds – the silence of ice and the voice of art. Through her work, she tries to bring the invisible stories of Antarctica to life.
Preserving the Heartbeat of Antarctica
Together with the ten other Antarctica-born people, Marisa created and is the president/founder of the organization Native Antarcticans. Their mission is five-fold:
– To protect the symbolic power of Antarctica as a beacon of peace
– To remind the world that people have lived and loved in desolate beauty
-To inspire new generations that Antarctica is a vital part of our shared story, a place that exemplifies when nations choose cooperation over conflict
-To show that in Antarctica the impossible is possible, through education, culture projects, art exhibitions, and environmental initiatives
-To show a place with no borders can unite a world divided
To stand for the preservation of the continent’s natural purity, and that a fragile earth must be cared with the same tenderness that brought life to this distant frozen placeAntarctica is The Heartbeat of our Planet
Antarctica has been ravaged by climate change in recent decades like many other places in the world, particularly at the northern and southern extremes of the world. Marisa wants the world to know that Antarctica is the heartbeat of our planet, with its glaciers holding the majority of earth’s fresh water. Its cold currents regulate the oceans. Its storms shape the weather patterns of the earth. When Antarctica suffers, the whole world does.
To follow the work Marisa De Las Nieves Delgado: Facebook: Native_Antarcticans, Instagram: @native_antarticans,
Website: taac-us.org
Jia-Jen Lin
Interdisciplinary Artist
JIA-JEN LIN, interdisciplinary artist displays her works inspired by Svalbard. Photo by Kaju Roberto.
Jia-Jen Lin is a Taiwanese artist born in Taichung. She was traditionally trained as a painter and holds a BFA from the National Taiwan University, before later receiving her MFA in Sculpture, Installation, and Multimedia from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston. She moved to New York City in 2007.
As an artist specializing in an interdisciplinary approach, Jia-Jen has drawn upon her diverse training and has carved out a unique career by creating installations spanning several media, including sculpture, photography, video, sound, text, and performance art. Her practice explores human experiences and conditions. She creates visual presentations to investigate the human body and its surroundings as a reflection of our psyche.
Since the start of the pandemic, Jia-Jen has been deeply disturbed by the destruction and social violence that has plagued New York City. With climate change, social movements like Black Lives Matter, and Asian hate crimes all happening at the same time, she was compelled to express her feelings through her art. This includes employing the concept of “landscape” visualized as a battleground and extension of the human body, while exploring the concept of “post-landscape” where nature, human activities, digital media, and materiality intersect.
Treading on Thin Ice
These concurrent events beginning in 2020 inspired Jia-Jen to create a series called Treading on Thin Ice, her collection contemplating human conditions under progressive catastrophes resulting from social issues and climate change. This deep reflection, inquisitiveness and exploration into her own interdisciplinary work is what has guided Jia-Jen to pursue her two fascinating trips to the Arctic. These were important art research trips in 2022 and 2024 to the world’s northernmost inhabited lands of Svalbard, which is an isolated Norwegian island archipelago hundreds of miles north of the Arctic Circle.
Both trips were made possible by the Arctic Circle, a program bringing artists, scientists, environmentalists, writers, and performers together on the same boat to sail around Svalbard. However, her first scheduled trip to Svalbard was postponed in October 2020 due to Covid-19 travel restrictions. Meanwhile, Jia-Jen continued to work on her concept of Treading on Thin Ice.
In 2022, she secured a new art show in Miami which was her first Treading on Thin Ice exhibition. She presented a man-made environment which juxtaposed the familiar and unfamiliar, including a backyard-like installation resembling sculptures of concrete pavers and artificial grass. During this time, Jia-Jen also collaborated with laboratory scientists and actors to create natural and artificial landscapes which culminated in her video of a scenic panorama captured on Mars!
Breaking New Ground
Jia-Jen finally received clearance to sail with her group around Svalbard after her Miami show in 2022. Thirty to forty scientists, artists, actors, writers, and performers lived in close quarters on a large sailboat for two weeks. They started out in the central west near the town of Longyearbyen and set sail to uninhabited Bear Island, the northernmost island on the archipelago.
On her first visit to Svalbard, during hiking trips while on polar in-field research, the group was required to carry a rifle at all times. This is by law, as on Svalbard it is a common occurrence to see polar bears. Based on this amazing trip Jia-Jen was able to create a three-channel generative visual called Collapsing Landscape, which employed video, sound, generative visual, sculpture, and text to reimagine where we, as humans, stand amid our changing land. It was shown around Taipei in 2023 as part of the Video Bi-Annual.
Her second trip in 2024 was a vastly different experience; it was a Special Circumnavigation Expedition. She was on a large ship with over 100 people onboard. Borne from this Svalbard trip Jia-Jin, in collaboration with a writer and music composer, produced a virtual mixed reality work in 2025 which showed in Berlin. It was centered about the trash in Svalbard!
Read this article on the Art Journey to the Extremes of the Earth where I originally wrote it in The Village View:
From South Pole to North Pole: An Art Journey to the Extremes of the Earth
To view Jia-Jin’s work, visit Governors Island House 17. Website: taac-us.org
Kaju Roberto is an accomplished musician, singer/ songwriter, journalist, and an award-winning producer. He is the artist Rad Jet on Spotify