New exhibition at Hafnarhús – Hulda Rós Guðnadóttir: WERK – Labor Move

04.02.-09.05.2021

In her solo exhibition at Reykjavík Art Museum - Hafnarhús, Hulda Rós Guðnadóttir focuses on social issues in a site-specific installation. The installation WERK – Labor Move is made especially for the museum’s main hall as the building Hafnarhús was originally built as a warehouse on the quay.

The work consists of a three-channel filmic work, Labor Move; sculptures, directly related to the filmic work; and a video recording of the assembling of the sculptures in the run-up to the exhibition.

Labor Move is the centre point of the installation. In the work, parallels in the manual labor which went on in this building before are examined in the context of the gentrification process of the port area. Hafnarhús is the first building by Reykjavík Harbour to be given a new role as a building for art and cultural activities and has become characteristic of the area, similar to the development of harbour areas everywhere.

In the filmic work, we see several dockworkers performing specifically for the camera, based on movements they have become accustomed to over a long period of time while unloading boxes of frozen fish from within the hull of the first trawler and over to the quayside at Reykjavík Harbour. The film is the result of Guðnadóttir’s collaboration with dockworkers which lasted for several years. Until recently, the workers worked on the quayside. They also appeared in her filmic work Keep Frozen in 2016 which will be screened in Hafnarhús during the exhibition period.

Hulda Rós Guðnadóttir (b. 1973) lived in Reykjavík before moving to Berlin in 2009. After receiving a BA in anthropology and an MA in interactive design, she began studying art at the Iceland University of the Arts from where she graduated in 2007. Guðnadóttir has received various awards for film and art, e.g. a grant from the Guðmunda S. Kristinsdóttir Art Fund in 2019 and the Penninn Art Award for aspiring artists in 2008. Her works have been exhibited in art museums and public exhibition spaces around the world, most recently solo exhibitions at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, at the Berlinische Galerie and a premiere of her filmic work at the Savvy Contemporary 2019 in Berlin. Her most recent exhibition in Iceland was participation in Across the Golden Bridge, a part of the Icelandic Sculptors Society’s exhibition series in Reykjavík in 2020.

In connection with Guðnadóttir's exhibition, an international symposium will be held on 27 February 2021 on the position of work on the boundaries of art and filmmaking, on one hand, and on the other the work of visual artists who focus on social issues in their filmic work.

Curator is Birta Guðjónsdóttir.