The Barents Sea Book is a continuation of the cross-cultural exploration of the Barents Sea coast by artists from Petrazavodsk working alongside artists from Nordland and Finnmark. Together, the artists spent one week in the only accessible village amongst the military zones of the Kola Peninsula, Teriberka, and one week at Bøkfjordfyret, a lighthouse five hours hike from Ropelv in Sør-Varanger. The Barents Sea book explores the theme of Northern books about the sea, particularly of the Northern Ice Ocean which is the Russian name for the Arctic Ocean.
The main idea of the project is to use the book as a metaphor, an object which has transferred information, truths and myths for thousands of years; in this project in particular, the book is a starting point to communicate impressions. The project involves artists as authors and visual art as a container for information gathered by the artists, specifically their shared experiences along the rugged Barents Sea coastline.
In today’s era of e-Books we can see that the book is a format that is open to the developing concepts of the author, a link that allows a connection between the reader and the authors interpretations of the world. In Karelia, the book has an almost sacred value as it has existed here in various forms since the early days of the written word. From ancient stone petroglyphs, to birch bark letters and handwritten or printed forms, the book has been the most valuable means of communicating ideas.
The project presents drawings, oil paintings, video works and installation pieces by Tonya Yufa, Anna Danilova, Dina Chetvertnaya, Igor Kotykov, Ivan Smirnov, Natasha Loginova, Sergey Terentev and Vemund Thoe.