One Dynamic System

Wow! Super excited to be included in this Queering the Arctic project by The Arctic Institute with my dear friend and curator, Jaime DeSimone. This interview discusses my longstanding practice within the North Atlantic and Arctic and my recent participation in the North Atlantic Triennial, Down Иorth through a lens of queerness and disability. Enjoy!

Portland Museum of Art
Listasafn Reykjavíkur / Reykjavík Art Museum
Bildmuseet

Geographical Problems: Interview with Artist Justin Levesque Curator, Jaime DeSimone interviews Portland-based interdisciplinary artist Justin Levesque to discuss his work on Geographical Problems.

In his interdisciplinary practice, Portland-based artist Justin Levesque considers the materiality and tradition of photography in relation to information exchange and mediated geographies of the High North. Levesque says about his practice: “I make art about the slippery relationship between images and objects by using content sourced from North Atlantic/Polar ecologies, heroic myths, dynamic systems, ice, and the internet’s obsession with all things blue. My image-based, sculptural, and site-specific projects visualize tech-centered shifts in contemporary cultural paradigms—landing in a continuum between IRL and the virtual.”⁠ Learn more at portlandmuseum.org/justinlevesque!
⁠
⭐ Save the date: Using both the oral tradition in Arctic Indigenous cultures and the deployment of images of disappearing global ice, Joan Kane, writer and theorist, will read poems from her most recent publication, "Dark Traffic," with the projected video work, "Ice Machine," by Triennial artist, Justin Levesque. Happening May 6, 5:30-7 p.m.: portlandmuseum.org/icemachine
⁠
Justin Levesque (United States, born 1986), (United States, born 1986), "Geographical Problems (your files are too powerful)," (installation view), 2021, Phototex, vinyl, photographs, acrylic, PLA, LCD, and PVC, 175 x 120 x 36 inches. Courtesy of the artist. © Justin Levesque