From the Floe Edge:
Visualising Sea Ice in Kinngait, Nunavut
In March 2025, I returned to Kinngait (Cape Dorset), located at the southern tip of Qikiqtaaluk (Baffin Island), Nunavut, for the third time—and the second as part of the British Academy-funded project that I lead focused on visualising sea ice change in the region. Collaborating with Sarah Cooley, a hydrologist at Duke University, and in partnership with the West Baffin Co-operative and the Kenojuak
© Isabelle Gapp
Cultural Centre and Print Shop, our work explores how scientific observation and artistic practice intersect to reveal different perspectives on sea ice change in Kinngait. Our approach is community-oriented and place-based. How is sea ice formation and change depicted and understood by artists and carvers in Kinngait?
As the longest-operating Indigenous-led print studio in Canada, for almost seven decades, artists here have drawn, carved, and printed images of ice—documenting, imagining, and reflecting on their environment. From the Floe Edge, the title of our project, works at the confluence of art history and glaciology, bringing together satellite data and scientific methods with local knowledge, creative practice, and visual analysis to tell a multi-disciplinary story of local sea ice history and change.
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Earlier this year, I travelled to Kinngait during the sea ice season to better understand how the ice is not only a feature of the landscape, but also an active, lived presence for those who move across and live alongside it. Along with Myrah Graham, Northern Research Liaison at Amundsen Science, we travelled out to the floe edge on a snowmobile and qamutik guided by local hunter and expert Iqaluk Toonoo. Myrah, also in town to share research and deepen relationships around marine science, works with Inuit communities to support collaborative, community-led approaches to marine research. Together with Kinngait artists, we’re continuing to build relationships that centre local experiences in scientific dialogue around the ocean and sea ice.
© Isabelle Gapp
While on the ice, we came across two-day-old polar bear tracks and watched walrus surface in open water. We spent time talking with Iqaluk about his work as a hunter and his involvement with various scientific monitoring initiatives. In addition to serving as the community’s polar bear watch, Iqaluk contributes to SmartICE surveys—his photo from May 2022 was even selected as a weekly Ice Watch winner. Listening to his stories brought home the urgency of what’s changing: the sea ice is thinning, the floe edge is retreating toward the community, and the edge itself has become far more unstable. These aren’t abstract changes, they’re shifts in the environment with imminent, if not immediate, consequences.
© Isabelle Gapp
© Isabelle Gapp
© Isabelle Gapp
© Isabelle Gapp
Now back in Aberdeenshire, I’m preparing for my next visit to Kinngait in a few months’ time. There won’t be any sea ice then, or at least there shouldn’t be. While historically the sea ice stuck around for most of the year, its season has shrunk considerably. These days, it usually begins forming around November or December (last year it held off until mid-December) and fully breaks up between May and June. Since I left in March, the days have grown longer, beluga have entered the bay, mussels and clams are being harvested, and the tundra’s wildflowers are beginning to bloom.
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Meanwhile, our project continues to grow. Sarah and I are currently working on our first academic paper. We’re also supporting the planning of a trip out onto the land for and led by the artists—either this September or shortly afterward—and looking ahead to early 2026, when we’ll host a multidisciplinary sea ice symposium in Aberdeen. New collaborations are forming, and the path ahead for the project is beginning to take shape.
Acknowledgements: Thank you to the following people for their time and support making this trip onto the ice happen, and for conversations since: Iqaluk Toonoo, Joemie Tapaungai, Myrah Graham, William Huffman, Audrey Hurd, and Martha Samayualie. This research was supported by a British Academy Knowledge Frontiers Interdisciplinary International Research Project award.
Isabelle Gapp is an Assistant Professor (Lecturer) and Interdisciplinary Fellow in the Department of Art History and Co-Director of The Centre for the North at the University of Aberdeen. She is a specialist in landscape and environmental art history from around the Circumpolar North and from 1800 to the present day. Isabelle is the author of A Circumpolar Landscape: Art and Environment in Scandinavia and North America, 1890-1930 (Lund Humphries, 2024).
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This blog post is based on the essay "A Brief Journey onto the Sea Ice in Kinngait, Nunavut" published by NiCHE (Network in Canadian History & Environment | Nouvelle initiative Canadienne en histoire de l'environnement).