Documents from Antarctica
Kristie MacDonald – 2022
“Documents from Antarctica investigates the role of material culture produced on and about the Antarctic continent. The body of work in this exhibition explores the potential to build meaning through gestures of accumulation, and the capacity of ephemera to act as evidence.”
Material culture is one of the primary ways humans understand and define themselves – responding to the conditions of their social and geographic surroundings by making, building, and recording. Documents from Antarctica investigates the role of material culture produced on and about the Antarctic continent. The body of work in this exhibition explores the potential to build meaning through gestures of accumulation, and the capacity of ephemera to act as evidence.
Pole Station Antarctica: December 15th 8am 1956 (2012–Ongoing) is a collection of envelopes postmarked at the same time, on the same day. Shifting scale each time it is exhibited, the work contains 136 envelopes and counting. When observed en mass the cumulative minutia of place names, postage stamp designs, and decorative embellishments expose the complicated cultural and geo-political circumstances of this particular mailing.
Documents from Antarctica was on display in the Main Gallery from June 11, 2022 to July 29, 2022.
Photos by Chris Miner.
About the Artist
Kristie MacDonald
Kristie MacDonald is a visual artist based in Toronto. Her practice based research engages notions of the archive and its roles in the evolving meanings and contextual histories of images, artifacts, and places. MacDonald is a recipient of awards from the Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, and the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts. She has exhibited her work in Canada, the United States, Norway, and Iceland. She is currently a PhD candidate in the department of Visual Art at York University, and an Assistant Professor at the University of Guelph where she teaches Studio Art.