The Centre de la photographie Genève (CPG) presents the first major solo exhibition of the Geneva-based artist Anastasia Mityukova. It will bring together for the first time a major part of her work dedicated to the visual culture of the Arctic and the North Pole, the fruit of her current research undertaken in 2017.
In residence in Qaanaaq, the northernmost town in Greenland, Anastasia Mityukova measures the distance between the imaginary of the Arctic Circle and its reality. For several years, she has been studying, deconstructing and confronting the Western visual culture of the North Pole with reality. Shaped by countless documentary films, illustrated books or photographic reports, it is based on explorers acclaimed as heroes, a fauna that has become a generic symbol of global warming, or immaculate and iconic landscapes. These images give pride of place to fantasies of purity, adventure, exoticism and authenticity, offending more complex realities: geopolitical interests on all sides, a colonial history that is little discussed as such, or a certain ambivalence in the face of climate change representing risks, but also opportunities. The artist seizes on these contradictions to bring nuance and complexity to these representations, and to underline the extent to which our view is constructed and shaped by media representations.
Anastasia Mityukova : Have You Ever Seen An Iceberg Under The Rain ?
Until April 16th, 2023
Centre de la photographie Genève (CPG)
Rue des Bains 28
1205 Genève, Switzerland
www.centrephotogeneve.ch
