Mannréttindi og Samfélag
Hildarleikur / Game of War 2018
Endur-Fundir / Re-Union solo exhibition
Venue: Hlöðuloftið, Korpúlfsstaðir Art Center, Reykjavík, 2018
Leikföngin hér eru smækkaðir tákngervingar hluta úr fullorðinsheimi. Í leikjum sviðsetja saklaus börn tilveru sína og hugrenningar.
Bernska – Sáttmáli / Childhood – Convention (2018)
performance; Venue: The Living Art Museum, Reykjavík
The performance consists of several children and adults reciting texts, unsynchronized. The children recited from an old Icelandic children’s fairy tale “Dimmalimm”, while the adults recited the United Nations “Convention on the Rights of the Child”.
Performed by children and members of the Nýlókórinn/Íslenski hljóðljóðakórinn (The Icelandic Sound Poetry Choir) conducted by Pétur Eggertsson.
Performers - children: Úlfur Ásgeirsson, Guðný Salvör Hannesdóttir, Hulda Guðbjörg Hannesdóttir, dóttir Péturs stjórnanda, og ungur drengur.
Members of the Nýlókórinn/Íslenski hljóðljóðakórinn /The Icelandic Sound Poetry Choir (Þorgils Baldursson, Gísli Fannberg, Inga Jónsdóttir, Magnea Ásmundsdóttir, Hafdís Helgadóttir and Pauliina Jokela) and Rúrí.
Sky Gyre (2017)
By Pari Stave
The Icelandic artist Anna Eyjólfsdóttir uses found objects as her raw material. Her installation Sky Gyre, 2017, is composed of two massive nets suspended from the ceiling. The effect immediately conjures the history of the Hjalteyri factory and its demise. One of the nets contains discarded toys (brightly colored plastic furniture, games, dollhouses, and dolls); the other holds a heavy load of old clothes, shoes, boots, and life vests. Walking around and underneath this strange catch, the viewer is filled with a sense of foreboding as the weight of the nets literally hangs by a thread, threatening to come crashing down. There is profound sadness in the work, too, as one considers that each toy and article of clothing was once something held close by its owner.
Iceland in the 1950s, during Eyjólfsdóttir’s childhood and adolescence, was not a time of excessive consumption. “We had nothing,” she recalls, “but we used our imagination.” For her, the “glorious dream” of mass production and the cultural sameness it brings is a delicate equation of want versus need, an imbalance between those with enough access to goods to be waste-ful, and those living in desperate conditions. The work’s title references the idea of waste on a global scale, in particular the discarded plastics that pollute the world’s oceans, much of which is accumulating in a vast area in the southern hemisphere known as the Pacific Gyre.
Likewise, Eyjólfsdóttir’s video installation Brot-Sjór / Broken Sea, 2017, refers to the fragility of life and natural resources. Images of waves shot outside the factory are projected onto the side of the room and reflect off a circular arrangement of shattered glass. The skeletal form of a boat is placed at the center of the installation, a reference to the biblical ark, a conveyance symbolizing the survival of all species.
Pari Stave is an an American art historian and indipendent curator.
From the catalogue of the exhibtion Hverfing | Shapeshifting,
published by the Academy of the Senses, Reykjavík, 2018
Tread Softly (2016)
einkasýning í gallery Art on Armitage, í Chicago, USA
Art on Armitage var eitt elsta listamannarekna gallerí Chicago borgar í starfsaldri talið, en myndlistarmaðurinn og activistinn Mary Ellen Croteau, stofnaði og stjórnaði galleríinu.
Það var til húsa í hverfi borgarinnar þar sem glæpatíðna er mjög há, en þar er einnig starfræktur herskóli fyrir upprennandi hermenn, nýliða á unglingsaldri sem fæstir hafa haft tök á að mennta sig.
Big Laundry (2014)
Performance by Anna Eyjólfsdóttir, Ragnhildur Stefánsdóttir, Þórdís Alda Sigurðardóttir, Þuríður Sigurðardóttir
Venue: Laundry, Performance Festival, 12-14.09.2014
Galeria Miejska bwa, and city space Bydgoszczy, Poland
BIG LAUNDRY
The tradition of neighbours doing their laundry together in public isn’t an exclusively Polish one. Residents of Reykjavik used to come to a place some 3 km away from the city and washed their „dirty laundry” in the open air, in a pond created by the waters of hot springs. This time, the artists from Poland and Iceland will meet on the Mill Island and use their artistic activities to relate to the neighbourly washing that used to take place in the past on the banks of the Młynówka.The process of producing an identity is based on the presence of places with special memories, and also on interactions in those places and ritualising everyday existence in a way appropriate for a given culture. Due to the presence of those symbolic places, space is a testament of a given region and gives an identity to an individual. The tradition of neighbours doing their laundry together in public isn’t an exclusively Polish one. Residents of Reykjavik used to come to a place dominated by women, some 3 km away from the city, and „washed their dirty laundry” in the open air. Until the electric lighting for buildings was invented, doing laundry was a kind of an expedition. Then, during World War II, Icelandic women washed their occupiers’ „old rags”. In Poland after World War II, the tradition of common washing also helped in maintaining contacts between people; the accompanying rumours, chants and discussions built a sense of community. Nowadays, washing is becoming more automated, it no longer has the characteristics of the old ritual, and this process is even faster in urban life.The proposals of the artists who were invited to the project, referring to the tradition of the common neighbourly washing and by reference to the history of the place and its rituals, will become an excuse for re-strengthening of interpersonal relationships, building a sense of community and identity.Once again, we ask the question about the role of artistic activities. To what extent is this still the ability to create, and to what extent a role that has to be played by art? What issues does it communicate today? Does the language attempting to describe its meaning bring new senses or is it limiting? And what, finally, comes from an artistic intervention into a public space, in what way does it change the people involved and does it change them at all?. What may the saying „washing dirty linen” mean, which refers to the concepts common in the Western culture, at the same time inducing the effect of negation, hostility or even disgust towards phenomena so designated. We’re attempting to „remove stains” from the city; will it helping emotional cleansing?
Hlið við hlið / Side by Side (2014)
Snertipunktar / Points of Contact
Venue: LÁ Art Museum, Hveragerði
The installation is a dedication to female labour workers in the fish industry in Iceland
Material; rubber aprons, rubber boots, rubber gloves, head scarfes, wood, metal.