Timelessness in times of rapid change: Guided tour with Ann-Sofie N. Greumaud - Where the World is Melting

Ann-Sofie Gremaud will give a guided tour through Ragnars Axelsson´s exhibition Where the World is Melting, where she will combine perspectives from classical art history, the ways climate change is mediated and the increasing interest in the Arctic.

The talk will be in Icelandic. Registration is necessary HERE.

Where the World is Melting encapsules at once a sense of timelessness and a sense of rapid change on a cultural and environmental level. Among the questions that Gremaud will address in her tour through the exhibition are how all of these aspects relate to Iceland and what makes photography a unique medium to represent these overlapping fields? In which way might the photographs be in a dialogue with both art history and the political region building that is going on right now in the West Nordic area? And how do they relate to the ways that Greenland and Iceland have usually been depicted historically? Gremaud will also discuss individual photographs in the exhibition with a focus on the different ways that they make time visible to us and how they use different angles to engage with nature. 

Ann-Sofie N. Gremaud holds a PhD in visual culture and has published numerous articles on contemporary art and representations of relations between humans and nature. She recently edited the two-volume book Denmark and The New North Atlantic (Aarhus University Press, 2020) together with Professor Kirsten Thisted about cultural and political developments in the West Nordic part of the Arctic. In 2018 she co-edited the anthology Artistic Visions of the Anthropocene North: Climate Change and Nature in Art (Routledge, 2018) with curator Gry Hedin. Gremaud works as a Danish lecturer at the University of Iceland and is currently part of the international research network The Art of Nordic Colonialism. 

The exhibition Where the World is Melting presents works by Ragnar Axelsson – RAX at Reykjavík Art Museum – Hafnarhús, selected from the series Faces of the North, Glacier, Hunters and Heroes of the North. Gathered together at a pivotal moment, the photographs shed light on the changes that are taking place in the physical and traditional realities of the North.