If the story of the summer in travel was the scorching heat across
Europe, the continent is ending the year with a very cool experience
with the reopening of Sweden’s IceHotel for its short winter season
lasting until mid-April.
IceHotel opened in 1989 and is both a hotel and an art exhibition with ever-changing art made of ice and snow.
Over six weeks every winter, a new hotel is created from 500 tonnes
of natural ice from Sweden’s Torne River. The ice maintains the hotel’s
constant inner temperature of -5 degrees Celsius.
The IceHotel has 44 rooms and 28 chalets, three conference rooms, a
ceremony room during the winter season, a movie theatre, three
restaurants and four wilderness camps.
When spring sunshine thaws the hotel’s ice, a section remains open year-round for guests.
This year, 32 artists from 14 countries designed the hotel’s art
suites. They included Singapore artists Edmund Chan and Tan Taitien,
whose work was called Nebula’s Child.
Chan is a snow and ice sculptor who has participated in and won
multiple awards at snow sculpture competitions. He works as an art
technician at Tanglin Trust School in Singapore.
Tan Taitien is a professional papermaker at STPI – Creative Workshop
& Gallery, where he collaborates with artists to push the creative
possibilities of fine art print and paper.