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Core Memory brings together, for the first time, 88 Cores and 18 Cores, two of Peggy Weil’s visualizations of Earth’s climatic histories. A pioneer of digital portraiture, Weil has recently turned her attention to what she calls Extended Landscapes: portraits of the invisible layers “beneath our feet, above our heads, and back in time.” Her work opens a window onto the planet as a recording device, revealing how climatic and geological events are inscribed into polar ice sheets and sedimentary strata.
From the youngest snow to the oldest ice, 88 Cores descends two miles and 110,000 years through Greenland’s ice sheet. Unlike tree rings, which grow concentrically, ice preserves time vertically. Each annual layer of snow compacted into ice carries bubbles of air and gases. The inscriptions and distinct shades of blue noticeable in some cores—drilled between 1989 and 1993 as part of the Greenland Ice Sheet Project—document the evolution of imaging technologies used to digitize these ice fragments over the years. In 18 Cores, Weil shifts from polar cold to geothermal heat, assembling images of rock cores extracted from California’s Salton Sea between 1985 and 1986. The six vertical strands of cores unveil a subterranean landscape of shales, siltstones, and sandstones dating to the Pleistocene era.
“The pace of climate change is too slow to apprehend, and its substances—gases like methane and CO2—are invisible,” the artist observes. Through these vertical scrolls, Weil makes the physical evidence of environmental shifts perceptible and undeniable.
Peggy Weil: Core Memory is organized by Paula Vilaplana de Miguel, Curatorial Associate, Department of Architecture and Design.
The project is made possible by MoMA’s partner Hyundai Card.
Images
Peggy Weil. 88 Cores. 2017. Digital video with score by Celia Hollander. Still featuring cores extracted at depths of -1855m to -1856m. Image courtesy of the artist
Peggy Weil. 88 Cores. 2017. Digital video with score by Celia Hollander. Still featuring cores extracted at depths of -2545m to -2546m. Image courtesy of the artist
Peggy Weil. 88 Cores. 2017. Digital video with score by Celia Hollander. Still featuring cores extracted at depths of -611m to -612m. Image courtesy of the artist
Peggy Weil. 18 Cores. 2025. Digital video. Still featuring geothermal cores extracted from the Salton Sea. Image courtesy of the artist