Andrea Juan Brings Art & Biology Together
By Roland Dupuy — March 2024
All images courtesy of Andrea Juan
Juan’s Antarctican artistic awakening began in 2005, when she was granted permission to travel to Argentina’s Esperanza Base, located in Hope Bay, at the far end of the continent’s Trinity Peninsula. Her first work, entitled Red Snowlanding, addressed the degradation of the ice sheets via the unfurling of 80 meters of red tulle. Mother Nature bleeding, brought to life through textile and film — and ever since that first artistic expedition, Juan has been hooked. “It was an amazing experience. The first time I worked there, I never imagined that I would be developing different series and coming back every year for a new project. But the first experience was so marvelous that I asked the National Antarctic Director to open an Art Residency Program there,” she explains. Eager to continue pushing her personal and creative limits in such a brutal, yet thrilling environment, Juan conceptualized and realized a number of new works, each intended to transmit her vision of a better, greener world even further into our collective consciousness.
“I worked in different bases and would stay for one or two months each time. I traveled by helicopter, icebreaker, zodiac, on small airplanes and ships… The experience living there is different to anything I’ve ever known.”
ANDREA JUAN
ANDREA JUAN
The 2006 Metano series, performed and captured at Marambio Base, built on her work with tulle to address the issue of trapped methane gas being released from under the ice sheet as it melts. 2008’s Geo Radar series, meanwhile, intends to explore the potential for Antarctica to become a source of green energy, thanks to its abundant and strong winds. Juan’s fascination with biology, geology, and their interaction with textiles and human ideas of artistic narratives further fuelled her Antarctic experimentation and practice, and in 2010 she produced the Invisible Forest series, exploring the effect that marine phytoplankton can have on weather patterns.
Over the course of her many expeditions, she explored the continent in great depth, a highly impressive feat for someone without a scientific background. “I worked in different bases and would stay for one or two months each time. I traveled by helicopter, icebreaker, zodiac, on small airplanes and ships… The experience living there is different to anything I’ve ever known. The landscape is so unique and the light has no comparison,” she tells.
For someone who is not a trained scientist, there’s a very clear, methodical, almost scientific approach to her research and process. And everything is connected, too — material and textile experimentation leads her to sculpture, which then evolves into performance art, which is then retransmitted as an immersive video installation. Every piece can feed and fuel the creation of the next, each revealing a piece of the puzzle which is Juan’s mind.
Her portfolio was built through research and testing, her work inspired not only by nature, chemistry and physics, but also by numerous renowned artists who came before her. “I cannot mention just one or two, there are so many artists that inspired me,” she explains. “From Claude Monet with his Nénuphars [Lily Pads] to Christo and Jeanne-Claude with their land art and site-specific installations, the firsts painting from the Paleolithic period (40 000 years ago) to [sculptor] Richard Serra and [video artist] Bill Viola among others,” she continues.
Since her childhood, Juan has sought to not only express her ideas and feelings through visual media, but to innovate and move artistic processes forward through the development of new techniques. “I began my painting classes when I was 5 and since then, I have continued using different techniques and media. I studied at the National School of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, where I specialized in printmaking and etching,” she tells, adding that “the use of acid in printmaking is very toxic, so I developed a non-toxic printmaking technique in order to avoid the use of harmful chemicals and developed it in many workshops. It was at that point that I became conscious about the fragility of our environment.”
In 2010, the discovery of a new species of sea anemone in Antarctica prompted Juan to create the series New Species in early 2011. Working with felt and wool, she crafted the textiles around metal support structures into a chain of inter-connected orbs, emerging from the glacial landscape like some kind of futuristic spherical flowers in full bloom. It’s an intensely bittersweet visual and sensory journey — the new species were discovered deep beneath the Weddell Sea, and studying them led to a greater understanding of the marine environment in the region. But the anemones had laid undisturbed under the Larsen A & B ice shelves for the last thousand years or so, and climate change caused by human activity is on course to disturb far more than just their habitat.
Still, the first step toward a cleaner future is to acknowledge and be informed about the changes that are occurring, as Juan believes. In the New Species film, the orbs are guided and held by a human figure dressed entirely in black, an anonymous body interacting with the continent’s energy, and bringing the new species firmly into the light. Penguins and other wildlife are captured alongside the orbs, signaling an acceptance of the constant changes in nature, and hope for a more harmonious future.
“Fossils of tree trunks, remains of marine shells, teeth and fossilized animal bones... relics from the past in Antarctica when it was part of Gondwana — this is a New Eden born from the ice fields”
ANDREA JUAN
ANDREA JUAN
Reflections on entropy and evolution led Juan to create New Eden in 2012. A site-specific installation, which later became a photo series, New Eden imagined the upheaval and revelation of organisms and creatures buried below Antarctica’s surface. “Fossils of tree trunks, remains of marine shells, teeth and fossilized animal bones... relics from the past in Antarctica when it was part of Gondwana — this is a New Eden born from the ice fields,” Juan reveals. The series was more conceptual than much of her previous work, with textile shapes, felt disks and tulle nets all employed to represent organisms and fossils scattered across the rocks and ice.
The evolution and metamorphosis explored in this series led Juan to revisit New Species, building upon her initial exploration by venturing further into material experimentation for the creation of Organic in 2013. Juan worked with acrylics, PET molded elements, rubber transfers on tulle, nylon, spandex, polyester, silk, crepe de chine, silks, synthetic fabrics and organza to create sculptural elements, shapes and inter-connected forms. The result is a symbiosis of the natural and chemical, the human and digital, thrusting technology and biology together in an exploration of physical and imagined intersections and boundaries.
Juan’s last Antarctic expedition, in 2014, led to the creation of Solar Storm, a “visual narrative of stasis and movement” exploring feelings of calm and power, as she describes it. Metallic, fluorescent and translucent fabrics were used alongside spherical shapes to create inorganic creatures, floating sheets and reflective blobs representing the radioactive plasma that is expelled into the solar system during solar storms.
After a decade of pushing her creative boundaries across the raw and wild canvas of Antarctica, Juan pivoted towards a more future-focused practice, engaging in teaching and development initiatives designed to promote the benefits of the arts. “Since 2014, my husband Gabriel Penedo and I have worked together, not only developing our own pieces but running an Art Residence in Cantabria, in the north of Spain. This year, we’ll receive a lot of artists from different latitudes,” she tells. In her Spanish base, Juan has found a place of immense artistic inspiration that is inarguably more hospitable and livable than the frozen Antipodean continent. She has continued to find inspiration in the natural environment, though, explaining that “we work closely in caves, creating rock art, and our work has been modified by the influences of the first [prehistoric] art and creations. We are motivated by relation to the environment and our roots — this passion moves us.”
Today Juan continues on her quest to bridge the gap between the natural and metaphysical realms, addressing sustainability and the need for greater collective climate consciousness. “We are developing a new project to be set in the middle of a forest, between ancient trees,” she reveals, explaining that “the installation talks about the energy that all beings have and its constant transformation. As a species, we have been living in this area for more than 150,000 years, and all those souls and energy are in the air, between the trees.”
Juan’s fascination with biological and cosmic energy is perhaps one reason why she doesn’t fall down the environmental doomsday rabbit hole when dealing with environmental themes in her work. After all, if everything is connected and evolving at the same time, surely we as a species will find ways to adapt, and will make it out okay. “I do feel worried, but I consider the best way to connect with the viewer is by working in a positive way,” she shares, concluding that “I think people feel more committed if you speak positively and invite them to participate and be part of the decisions we make. Because of this, we always try to include the visitor in our works. Without love and respect, we’ll disappear.”
Find out more about Andrea Juan’s work at www.smproart.com, www.andreajuan.net and www.circleproart.com
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By Roland Dupuy & friends
Est. 2023, London
Book 1 - Hope in Motion - Available soon