Artists Talk: Iðavöllur

Artists talk with Anna Rún Tryggvadóttir and Styrmir Örn Guðmundsson who have works in the exhibition Iðavöllur: Icelandic art in the 21st Century. In Icelandic.

Registration is required HERE.

In 2021, Reykjavík Art Museum focuses on the microenvironment, with an aim of displaying the growth of the Icelandic art scene. The whole Hafnarhús becomes the setting for a powerful exhibition of new works by young artists who may be considered to be in the lead for their generation, and assumptions can also be made about the larger context of Icelandic and international contemporary art. It’s been a while since we checked in with what’s brewing among the fastest growing and most prominent artists and reflects subjects and approaches of the present. 

The title of the exhibition is Iðavöllur. It is borrowed from Völuspá and occurs twice in the poem. Iðavöllur is the place where the gods meet when the world is constructed and then reassemble at following Ragnarök to build a new world. Hafnarhús takes on the role of such a meeting place, as a location for creative artists in the maelstrom of change at the start of the new millennium. The theme of the exhibition is the creative and transformative power contained in the work of artists and it reflects diverse subjects at a time of technological and social transformation. 

The artists are selected based on how they react to the present and how their perspective influences the perspective of the viewer. These artists have shaped the Icelandic art scene at the start of the new century. People of this generation have a unique position because of the junction they stand at: They fall between the X and Y generations, at the birth of the millennium generation. The artists remember a world without internet and smartphones, they experienced the economic collapse and the MeToo revolution, they sense the boundary between geochronological age and the Anthropocene and are faced with a climate catastrophe. They participate in building an art scene which is undergoing a professionalisation with the arrival of art academies, international galleries and art history publications. They represent a generation who deals with increased speed, more flow of information, blurry borders, fluctuating gender, changes in communications, new technology – all while still remembering the way it used to be. In a sense, they are experiencing the end of the world and contributing to a new beginning.

Anna Rún Tryggvadóttir (b. 1980) completed her MA Fine Arts at Concordia University in Montréal, Canada in 2014 and her BA Fine Arts from Iceland Academy of the Arts in 2004. Between 2019-20 she participated in a year-long studio residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, and is the 2021 recipient of the Guðmunda S. Kristinsdóttir Art Fund.

Styrmir Örn Guðmundsson (b. 1984) lives and works in Berlin. He received his BFA from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and an MA from the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam in 2012. Styrmir has exhibited and performed internationally, in festivals, museums and project spaces. In 2017, he started What Am I Doing With My Life?, which has been widely-performed around Europe, including at the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale. Styrmir was year-long artist resident at Künstlerhaus Bethanien between 2020-21.