Dry Ice: Alaska Native Artists and the Landscape is an exhibition including works by contemporary Native Alaskan artists that explore the multiple meanings of and associations with the Alaskan landscape.

“Dry Ice”—a term that denotes frozen carbon dioxide, which when taken out of a frigid environment rapidly dissolves from a solid form into a gaseous state—is meant to evoke the shifting significance of the Alaskan polar landscape in contemporary Native art. Given the central place of Alaska and its landscape in recent national debates surrounding the environment and the oil crisis, the subject of this exhibition is both timely and important to present outside of Alaska.

The exhibition features the work of Alaska Native artists, including Brian Adams, Susie Bevins-Ericsen, Perry Eaton, Nicholas Galanin, Anna Hoover, Erica Lord, Da-ka-xeen Mehner, and Larry McNeil. Each explores their relationship to the landscape, through a variety of interpretations and media, combining traditional and innovative forms from mask-making and skin sewing to photography and installation.

Dry Ice is curated by Julie Decker, Ph.D., of Anchorage, Alaska. Decker is the director of the International Gallery of Contemporary Art in Anchorage, a frequent guest curator of the Anchorage Museum and the author of numerous publications on art and architecture of Alaska.