Artist Documents Seagoing Life Aboard Icelandic Cargo Ship
by John Rogers
The Reykjavík Grapevine
February 22, 2016
"After a visit to Iceland in 2014, American artist Justin Levesque was surprised one day to see that Iceland had followed him home, when stacks of blue Eimskip containers started appearing on the dock in his hometown of Portland, Maine.
A door opened up in his mind, and he immediately started to put together an ambitious project—a self-created artist residency that would entail a nine day voyage, spent living aboard an Eimskip vessel, using various media to document the journey, the experience, the crew, the sense of place, and the commercial significance of this new connection between Iceland and the United States.
What resulted is an intriguing and lyrical glimpse into the environment of the ship, and the everyday life of its crew. We caught up with Justin to find out how it was to be an outsider documenting this tight-knit seagoing community, and to find out where the project is headed now.