Zaria Forman: Antarctica

Zaria Forman’s Antarctica, her most recent body of work, was inspired by a four-week residency aboard the National Geographic Explorer. The magnificent yet harsh landscape of Antarctica, where life struggles to exist, is filled with majestic monoliths of ancient ice. Today it is also a landscape in flux. As temperatures rise, glaciers melt more rapidly than they grow. Forman’s large-scale and detailed drawings are meant to make Antarctica’s beauty and critical existence visceral to the viewer. Her drawings capture moments in time in this rapidly changing ecosystem, allowing us to celebrate what is still here, and contemplate what we stand to lose.

Zaria Forman’s work is exhibited widely across the United States and is held in the collections of the Arkansas Art Museum and the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum. Her drawings have been featured by press organizations the world over and appear in the Netflix series House of Cards. Recently she was honored with a solo exhibition and lecture series at the Harvard University Center for the Environment (HUCE) and was a featured TED speaker at the Town Hall Theater in NYC. NASA invited Zaria to join their Operation IceBridge in Antarctica and Greenland, which she did in 2016 and 2017.