Artist Kristin McIver Unpacks the Link Between Data and Climate
Her latest exhibit, “Impressions,” debuted last Saturday at the Jane Lombard Gallery.
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In a velvety green wrap dress, artist Kristin McIver floated around the Jane Lombard Gallery in Tribeca, where her latest exhibit, Impressions, debuted on Saturday. “This show was supposed to happen last April,” she tells me as two visitors crane their necks to view one of her 12 video sculptures, each comprising of an acrylic cube that acts as an extended screen playing looping clips of water. Each cube’s name corresponds with its geotag from the film’s location, except for Current Location, which is the only cube filled with real water. “But the pandemic has created so much new context for my work, though. We’re looking at our screens all the time, even to look at nature.”
McIver’s three-part Impressions series explores the relationship between data and narrative when it comes to climate change. The first iteration focuses on water, while the next two will tackle earth and fire, respectively, at the MARS Gallery in Melbourne and Royale Projects in Los Angeles. Between the prisms and immersive, large-format video installations to the poems and neon signage excerpted from climate data algorithms, McIver highlights how easy it is for information to become distorted and for us to only appreciate nature as an object, thanks to social media.
I sat down with the Australian-born, New York-based artist this week to talk about her inspiration behind Impressions as well as the importance of questioning one’s own relationship with social media.
How did growing up in Australia influence you and gravitate you towards making art about climate change?
Australia has always been affected by bushfires and wildfires. While I was making these works, I was at residency in Curacao, but, at the time, Australia was going through those horrific bushfires last January as well. Growing up in a country with extreme heat, we’ve always been water conscious. Sometimes I can’t believe it when I see the amount of water that gets wasted in…
