“The Story of Ice” shows the significance of ice in a local and global context

The 400m2 exhibition space appears as an open ice landscape where the visitors are invited to explore the stories of the ice. The exhibition conveys the huge scale in which the ice can be considered. From the birth of the ice crystal to the enormity of the indlandice, and its impact on the world. 

The themes of the exhibition are visualized through digital and audiovisual exhibition elements, large scale projections, and archeological artefacts, greenlandic artworks, and two art installations created with The Niels Bohr institute and Geus. Interactive models of the Kangia Icefjord tells about life by the Fjord, and the 4000 years old settlement Sermermiut, located right outside the Icefjord Centre. An exceptional element of the exhibition is the original ice cores on display, collected deep within the Greenland inland ice. 

“The story of ice is the story of man. The exhibition is an invitation to approach nature, and understand man’s place within it. It opens up to reflections about humankind’s existential conditions, and the acknowledgement of us, as being a part of the greater whole. This idea brings us together across cultures, since the condition of the ice affects us all”  says exhibition Architect Johan Carlsson, JAC studios

Stories created by the ice

JAC studios extensive fieldwork, sailings and walks in Kangia Icefjord has affected and inspired an exhibition created in communication with landscape and culture. Iconic for the exhibition is mouth blown prisms of glass, directly cast from the ice in the Fjord. They appear as icebergs floating in the exhibition landscape. The icebergs are molded by ice blocks which Johan Carlsson has collected during his sailings in the Fjord, 3Dscanned, and worked into a delicate interpretation of the landscape.

“To make this Exhibition for the Ilulissat Icefjord Centre has been about so much more than aesthetics. The ice landscape in Greenland opens up all your senses, it is ever changing and dangerous. It constantly creates new images, and is at the same time fierce and poetic. It is impossible to design something as beautiful as nature itself, and for that reason we have invited the ice along as designer to the exhibition. The shape of the glass prisms exhibited is a result of the cold from the ice, the streams of the water, and the warmth of the climate.”  says Johan Carlsson of JAC studios.