Performance

Year: 2020 (Brooklyn, NY)

2020 (Cold Spring)

2019 (Hartford, CT)

2018 (Tallinn, Estonia)

2018 (Swansea, UK)

ongoing

Jaanika Peerna’s work has always been fueled by the forces of nature but since 2017 the artist took on a more specific approach to address the climate breakdown we are all surrounded with. Ever since she was a little girl dreaming of becoming an Olympic figure skater, ice has been close and dear to her: its toughness, transparency, beauty as well as fragility. As we are witnessing a massive and furious melting speed of glaciers in polar regions these past decades Peerna has been looking for ways to face the facts, heal the soul as well as act an an artist in order to help slow the destruction down. Her Glacier Elegy performances are an evolving series of participatory happenings in galleries, museums  and public spaces. Earlier ones are essentially live drawing performances where at first a large drawing is made with audience participation and then the drawing is melted with blocks of ice. The audience is included in a collective experience of creating something only to be literally melted away by the end of the performance. As the series evolved Peerna started using her sculptural drawings as the ever transforming participants  in the performances and a sculpted piece of ice became more and more of a centre piece.