SNBA - Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes

Rua Barata Salgueiro 36, 1250-044 Lisboa

12 . 09 . 2024 → 12 . 10 . 2024

monday - friday → 12:00 pm – 07:00 pm

saturday → 02:00 pm – 07:00 pm

Artist

Ragnar Axelsson

Dusk is falling and the shadows lay down on the glacier after a bright sunny day. Ice, melted in the sunshine, glitters in the twilight. In the shifting glow, the glacier transforms, taking on strange shapes and images. A serpent slithers just under the ice, about to break through. A giant’s shadowed profile looms over the crevasses, guarding Öræfajökull. He looks away, then disappears, as the earth turns.

Something is happening under the surface. The earth’s heat is thawing the ice in the crater on top of the volcano, creating a depression. It looks like a eye, watching. The depression has been getting noticeably deeper. Öræfajökull last erupted in 1727, but its 1362 eruption was one of the biggest explosions on earth in the last millennium. 30 farms disappeared under rock and untold numbers of people were killed. Looking at the peaceful glacier gleaming in the sun, it’s impossible to imagine the danger lurking beneath its ice.

All things must pass. The glaciers are melting and ice formed over many centuries is disappearing in a matter of years. As the glaciers melt, the sea level is rising, but not uniformly. The water is highest at the equator, but as the weight of the Icelandic glaciers lessens, the land itself is rising, the coastlines are expanding, and the volcanoes are stirring.