Iceblink
Drum leaf bound book, drypoint, engraving and stencil printing, gold foil
10 x 11 x 1″
$2,500
Iceblink is an interpretation of archival materials documenting the 1932 voyage by Marie Peary Stafford to Greenland to oversee the construction of a monument to her father, explorer Robert Peary.
I began this project in university library archives, searching for an understanding of the United States colonial imagination and academia, and how these relate to whiteness, female identity, and embodied experience. I made this work to better understand the social constructs of whiteness, wanting to learn about the part I play in white supremacist systems by piecing together the story of a white woman historical figure.
“Iceblink” refers to the perceptual phenomenon of white light reflected onto the underside of clouds close to the horizon from distant plains of ice. The term reminds me of how I feel as like a white person today reading about a place through the colonial gaze of a white person from history.
