Carolyn Cheng (Toronto, ON)
Meltwater (Embers I), 2023. Archival Pigment Print. 24”x30”
Bio
Carolyn Cheng is an artist whose work re-examines traditional elements of landscape photography from an abstract aerial perspective by transforming water, sand and earth, to investigate aspects of the feminine sublime in the natural world.
She has shown at Gallery 44, the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery and TMU’s Paul H. Cocker Gallery. She has been published in On Landscape, Elements and Photo Ed Magazines as well as in National Geographic’s Photo of the Week series. She has also received awards from Critical Mass, Prix de la Photographie Paris and the International Photography Awards.
Artist Statement
Meltwater is a series of photographs that illustrate melting glaciers in remote regions of Alaska, revealing the potential effects of climate change, if unabated.
By introducing colour solarization into the series, the images showcase glaciers and meltwater pools not only in their natural state but also in a future dystopian world. Solarizing the images creates vivid, absurdist and surreal colour transformations; for example, blues turn to oranges where fragmenting glaciers resemble the wooden embers of a dying fire, or mountainous hard rock transforms into flowing molten lava. With further experimentation and transmutation of the image, solarization pushes the naturalistic liquid blue of meltwater pools into electric magenta, fuschia and green. These warm, unnatural colours render glacial pools into the visually familiar weather language of heat maps and thermograms; the latter illustrating meltwater pools as literal and figurative heat markers within the ice.
In the face of the potential loss of these spectacular natural wonders, “Meltwater” invites reflection on the dramatic rise in glacier melt resulting in rising ocean levels, flooded coastal cities and challenging global weather disruptions.