Ice Auction

Ice Auction is a painting of polar bears in formal clothes bidding at an auction for a single block of ice, made for the Genius Olympiad art category while I was a tenth-grader at British Columbia Collegiate in Seoul.

When I learned that Genius Olympiad stands for Global Environmental Issue and Us, I thought: this is a competition I have to be in. Not to show off how well I can draw — to use my own method to say something about climate change, the largest crisis my generation faces. Art is the medium I love most, and I believed it would be a very effective way to carry how serious the problem is.

Why polar bears, and why an auction

Two reasons. The first is that my generation, me included, does not take global warming seriously. Until recently I would scroll past an environmental meme without stopping, and I thought nothing of single-use plastic. Then I watched a documentary about polar bears and global warming, and what was in it was not the plump, cuddly bear we all picture — it was an animal that had lost the ground it lived on and was starving. I wanted a route to people my own age that they would not flinch away from, so I chose to anthropomorphise a bear.

The second reason comes out of my interest in contemporary art and auction culture. An art auction is the scene where the value of a scarce thing is pushed to its maximum. So I asked: if ice becomes scarce in the future, could it be auctioned too? That irony carries the severity harder than a statistic does.

The numbers I put in the presentation

The Arctic’s situation is severe. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Arctic sea-ice extent has been declining by roughly thirteen per cent per decade since 1979. There are warnings that summer Arctic sea ice could disappear entirely before 2050. As of 2023, the volume of Arctic sea ice was down about seventy-five per cent against the early 1980s.

On that trajectory, the day ice goes under the hammer may be closer than my painting makes it look.

Reading the picture

The single block of ice at the centre is the core of the work. Bright against the dark tone of the auction room, it looks like hope and at the same time stands for everything we are in the process of losing. I wanted the red carpet to sit against the cold of the Arctic and raise the tension in the room. The bears holding their paddles are drawn with deliberately vacant expressions, to carry the desperation and the anxiety of their position.

But the part to look at is the ties. I put yellow ties on the polar bears because yellow is the colour of hope and optimism. In a dark auction room, those yellow ties are there to say that we are not too late yet. When I presented the work, I wore a tie of hope myself — the same one my bears are wearing.

How it was made

I worked through a number of sketches to study the composition, and put most of that effort into the placement of the central ice and the bears around it. Then pencil on a quarter-sheet of drawing paper, a watercolour base, and coloured pencil for the detail. About a week of work in total.

The three things I wanted it to say

First, that global warming is no longer a story about the distant future. Second, as a warning: the things we take for granted can one day become expensive lots at an auction. Third, as an urgent call — that all of us have to change, and now.

I would rather this did not end as a competition entry. If people my own age, and anyone standing in front of it, think about the environment for even a moment because of it, that is the work done.