Sensing the Arctic is a large-scale land art installation located on a permafrost mire near the Swedish Tourist Association, Abisko. The work has been realized as a joint venture between the artists and the Climate Impacts Research Centre in collaboration with Naturum Abisko and Swedish Tourist Association Abisko.

Based on the duo’s artistic practice of combining sculpture, technology, nature, the weather, and climate, the land art project Sensing the Arctic studies how to translate the processes of climate change into bodily experiences. Positioned at the interface of the boreal and the Arctic biomes, Abisko is a unique place to understand how climate change affects northern ecosystems and how it is linked to our global climate system.

The project aims to create a possible model of the climate processes’ complexity – a chimera representing the conditions inside a thawing mire outside Abisko – that captivates the viewer. Inspired by the Open Top Chambers, the small open greenhouses scientists use to simulate a warmer climate, Bigert & Bergström have developed their own sculptural versions. This piece mimics the scientific experiment and develops it into experiential platforms that can induce alternative narrative structures to traditional scientific narratives. The artwork will most likely generate new impulses and extend its tentacles into future artworks, in the hope of expanding artistic, scientific, and emotional perspectives on how the Arctic and our climate will change over the coming centuries.

‘Sensing the Arctic’ was realized with the financial support of Kulturbryggan / The Swedish Arts Grant Committee. Stenvalls Trä AB, ESSVE, Cake, and Haglöfs sponsored parts of the production. The catalog accompanying the project has been realized with the support of the Längmanska Cultural Fund. 

Bigert & Bergström. Sensing the Arctic, 2023. Project catalogue.

Exhibitions