Art in a Changing Climate

A dialogue between science and creativity at ECCA2025

At ECCA2025, where researchers, practitioners, policy-makers, and civil society come together to collaborate towards climate-resilience, The Greenland Project by the Italian artist Roberto Ghezzi offers a peculiar perspective on the effects of climate change and glacier melting, combining visual art with scientific observation by exploring the melting of Arctic glaciers through cyanotype printing, to raise awareness about climate impacts.

In Roberto Ghezzi’s artworks, which move away from traditional painting techniques, nature speaks for itself as it is the natural elements that leave their mark on specially pretreated supports. In doing so, a dialogue between art, science, and ecology is sparked.

With The Greenland Project, Ghezzi gives artistic form to the phenomenon of glacial melting, which is transcribed using cyanotype, a specific technique which involves the use of photosensitized paper to detect the rapid changes in ice thickness. Ghezzi placed the photosensitized paper daily beneath slabs of Arctic ice, allowing the photosensitive salts to be washed away by the meltwater from the glacier over a fixed period of time: the paper essentially became a detector of both the condition and the speed of the glacier’s melting.

These surfaces become "speaking" materials, readable both artistically and scientifically/biologically. In his practice, Ghezzi increasingly seeks the perspective of biologists and scientists and, in this case, a collaboration with the CNR ISP (Institute of Polar Sciences) was born. Through it, it emerged that the works also visually document the presence and possible impact - on the timing and nature of ice melting - of a red algae. This algae appears as deposits on some of the papers, with their differing blot patterns indicating distinct melting phenomena.

The Greenland Project exhibition, featuring printings of Ghezzi’s original cyanotypes, testifies the urgent reality of climate change and the rapid transformation of fragile ecosystems. It invites viewers to engage not only with art but also with the scientific and environmental challenges at the heart of ECCA2025’s mission to foster resilience and adaptation in today’s’ and future’s society.

The exhibition will be displayed in the Foyer throughout the conference.

To know more about Roberto Ghezzi and his works, go here.

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Art in a Changing Climate

A dialogue between science and creativity at ECCA2025

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