on Conquest

Olga Kisseleva is an artist known for her use of scientific methods to create pieces of art. In one of her most recent works, Kisseleva created a new kind of map which shows the invasion of companies currently present in the Arctic. Its geopolitical and corporate powers, are shown through a series of company logos such as Shell Gas company and Esso. 

Arctic Conquistadors, Olga Kisseleva

As research and data progress, more and more oil and government company logos are placed and overlapped to show how deeply saturated the Arctic has become with private company acquisitions of land and government property.

It's interesting to see such a beautiful landscape be decimated by imagery of corporations from around the world. It looks almost as if there was a map spread out on a coffee table and a toddler just came and dropped hundreds of corporate stickers and paraphernalia on top of it. creating an obscure image of the natural looking map to a cluster of repetitive symbols.  With that said,  one of the answers as to why Kisseleva creates these maps is highlighted. Enlightening the viewer of what is actually going on in the world is the main focus. The Geopolitical and corporate struggle extends to cities in many ways. Political unrest in forms of demonstration and war have been breaking out both nationally and internationally and I feel this is just one more avenue in which activist or artist are achieving the spread of knowledge to their audiences.