Icelandic video art from 1975 – 1990

In the 1970s video was a new medium in art, predicated on electronic technology and hardware.  Artists’ opportunities to work with video at the time depended on their access to the right equipment. When hand-held video cameras and videotapes became available in the USA in 1967, a new art form came into existence, which was called video art. Steina and Woody Vasulka were part of shaping this new art form in the USA.

Steina exhibited her work in Iceland for the first time in 1984, around the same time that the first artists who had been involved with video art in their studies returned from postgraduate study in Holland. They showed the results in exhibitions in Iceland, but Icelandic artists who wanted to work with video in Iceland faced difficult times. It was not until the advent of music videos, which began to make their mark in Iceland in the late 1980s that artists gained real opportunities to experiment with the possibilities of video.