Earth Homing:

Reinventing Turf Houses

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ABOUT

Turf houses reveal our primordial connection to the earth. Passage farmhouses were unique to Iceland.

Dating back to the 9th century turf houses were home to all classes. Taking turf houses as a starting

point of artistic experimentation “Earth Homing: Reinventing Turf Houses” realigns us with architecture

and with our home. How can we ‘build’ for the future by revisiting this rich source of cultural heritage?

Lives and works in Reykjavík. She combines various mediums including drawing, sculpture and video, often using found material. Her practice explores the intersection between science and culture and draws on such diverse sources as politics, taxonomy and art history Fridbjörnsdóttir completed her BFA at London Guildhall University in 1998 and a MFA at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2004. Solo shows include "Serinade" at Hafnarborg, The Hafnarfjördur Center of Culture and Fine Art, for which she was nominated for the 2018 Icelandic Art Prize.

Born in Madison, Wisconsin, USA, lives and works in Reykjavík, Iceland. Gunnarsdóttir studied at UCLA in Los Angeles and at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Ásdís is known for her performances and video installations that experiment with the dimensionality of the projected medium and visual psychedelic poetry, treating videos as songs. Her work spans large video installations and performances as well as spoken word poetry and photography.

Studied at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts and at the Jan van Eyck Academy. He is one of Iceland’s most renowned artists with an extensive exhibition history including representing Iceland at the Venice Biennale in 1995. Birgir’s work tackles not distance but problems of nearness by exploring those rhetorical structures and material practices integral to Icelandic history and folklore.

Lives and works in Reykjavík. Borghildur has a Masters in Architecture from Universität der Künste Berlin. She worked at Studio Olafur Eliasson from 2015 to 2016. She has collaborated with various artists and directors in the creation of installations such as MEAT shown in Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz and as an actress and designer for Club Inferno staged by Volksbühne Berlin. Her latest project DEMONCRAZY was part of the Reykjavík Arts Festival in 2018.

Graduated with MFA from Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam, Holland in 2006 and has been a member of the Dieter Roth Academy since 2000. She is an Icelandic visual artist living and working in Reykjavík and Berlin. Hauksdóttir combines elements of audio, video, performance, sculpture, drawing and text to create transient conceptual assemblages exploring themes like cultural identity, nature, valor and fear. In 2015 “The Interval” was a Collateral event at the Venice Biennale and “Declaration” took place at the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein in Vaduz.

Graduated at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts with BFA and received MFA from California Institute of the Arts. A founder of Kling & Bang Gallery, Hekla has curated several exhibitions and has lectured at several art schools and is currently a professor at Iceland Academy of the Arts. Magic is a leitmotif in Hekla’s work as she seeks to capture the “perfect moments” when wonderful things appear unexpectedly and in the most unlikely places. Her multimedia installations, such as her sound-reactive cold cathode light sculptures of fireworks or waterfalls in dialogue with audio and video, have been exhibited internationally. 

Received her BFA from the Iceland University of the Arts. Thereafter she studied Philosophy and Creative Writing at the University of Iceland before moving to Amsterdam. Her most recent solo exhibition was “The remaining glimpses” at Candyland, Stockholm, 2017. Her work has been exhibited in Finland, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden as well as many various places around Iceland. She's been a member of two artist run gallery collaboratives, Gallery Port and Kuntschlager.

Born in Reykjavík, is the leading island dwelling artist of a generation that emerged in the wake of the cataclysmic great rift between art and artists in the bleak neo-capitalist Reykjavík of modern times. Kolbeinn’s work is simple, doesn’t need explanation and aims for the heart, not for the head. His work has been exhibited widely around the Western world and is preserved in the collection of the National Gallery of Iceland.

Studied at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts, Reykjavík and Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Hamburg. His work can be described as a balancing act between artistic and social issues. His work is constructed around the concept of multiple participation and is often characterized by site specificity. In a given context he creates a situation, a place, to enable creative and social processes to take place. Even though he often works with contextualized economic and social issues, the individual experience, the story of the participants, remains the core of the work.

Examines and dissects the nature, history, and folkloric traditions of Iceland in her photography and sculpture. Nordal completed a MA at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan and an MFA degree from the sculpture department at Yale University. In 2005, Nordal received the prestigious Richard Serra Award from the National Gallery of Iceland. Her work is permanently installed across Iceland, including Great Auk (1998) and Bríet Bjarnhédinsdóttir Memorial (2007) in the center of Reykjavík, Birds of the Sky (2007) at the Church of Ísafjörður, and most recently Thúfa by the harbor of Reykjavík. Nordal is an Associate Professor at Iceland Academy of the Arts.

Studied at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts before spending a year in Sweden. Her works are a sign of place such as the great volcanos Hekla and Katla both of which figure prominently in Icelandic history, consciousness, myth, literature, and art. They are also signs of Iceland and home. Róbertsdóttir uses materials for her wall works such as crushed glass, to make abstracted versions of glaciers, seashells and earth.

Primary goal as an artist is to create an experience for the viewer that is engaging and encourages interaction. He wants people to touch, play, explore and be curious. Often using natural phenomena like the creation of colors in a rainbow, the glow-in-the-dark of phosphoresce or pull of magnetism, the work becomes about each person's discovery as well as creating a shared experience of the strange and beautiful wonders of our universe. We are here now and everywhere forever.

One of the foremost of a generation of artists who came to prominence in Iceland during the 1970s. His work employs a wide variety of media, including photography, comic strip, video, painting, sculpture, performance, writing and installation based in folk tales, Icelandic sagas, women’s fashion magazines, religion, superstition, critical theory and many other current topics, Steingrimur represented Iceland at the Venice Biennale in 2007.

Preoccupation with the experience of art institutions has led him to push and pull at the symbolic and physical boundaries of exhibition spaces. Combined with his interest in the critique of systems—political, social, institutional—by means of approaching them intimately and domestically, Unnar stages exhibitions that receive the viewer like a welcome guest. Whether drawing upon content in museum archives or exhibiting archives of his own, Unnar often gives viewers the opportunity to take some part of the exhibition home with them.

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ARTISTS

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PUBLIC PROGRAM

“Earth Homing” asks how can we contribute to a new ecological definition of ‘home’? Parallel to the

exhibition a series of talks will further investigate future implications of how artistic and architectural

production can redefine national identity and cultural value. How can Iceland’s ‘exotic’ national identity

allow for a reinvention of sorts? What can be learned from this architecture which dominated all of

Icelandic history until its eradication at the beginning of the 20th century? “Earth Homing” bridges

different disciplines to allow for creativity to be the driving force for an ecological and ethical future.

Academics or experts in their respective fields will give talks at the various historic buildings of Grótta:

Ann-Sofie Nielsen Gremaud (University of Copenhagen), Hrólfur Karl Cela (Basalt Architects),

Sigrún Davíðsdóttir (RÚV), Kristín Loftsdóttir (University of Iceland), Sigurjón B. Hafsteinsson

(University of Iceland) and more speakers to be announced. Please visit Facebook and Instagram for the dates and locations of the talks.

SPEAKERS

Earth homing architecture

16.08.18 / 3.30pm, Hrólfur Karl Cela / Basalt Architects, Albertsbúð

Hrólfur Karl Cela, born in Reykjavík, Iceland is an architect and partner in Reykjavík Architecture Studio, Basalt Architects. Hrólfur studied architecture at the Iceland Academy for the Arts and at Parsons, the New School for Design in Manhattan, New York. Later he completed a teaching degree from the Iceland Academy for the Arts as well as studying Environmental Ethics at the University of Iceland. Basalt Architect´s projects are known for their interpretation of contemporary architecture and their sensitivity to natural context.

Turfhouses and (Post)Colonialism

21.08.18 / 6:00pm Sigurjón B. Hafsteinsson / University of Iceland, Raðagerdi

Sigurjón Baldur Hafsteinsson is a professor at the University of Iceland. His latest books are "Phallological Museum" (2013) and "Death and Governmentality: Neo-liberalism, Grief and the Nation-form" (2018, co-authored with Arnar Árnason).

The Reykjavík housing market – from the Reykjavík of Dieter Roth to a continuous crisis in a small, open economy

23.08.18 / 8:00pm, Sigrún Davíðsdóttir / RÚV, Veitingasala Nesklúbbsins

Sigrún Davíðsdóttir is an Icelandic journalist, living in London. She has covered the 2008 financial crisis, both in Iceland and elsewhere, extensively on her blog, uti.is. In 2011, she published a thriller in Icelandic, "Samhengi hlutanna", related to the crisis.

Don’t be Fooled by Iceland: Nation-Branding and Racialization

31.08.18 / 2.30pm Kristín Loftsdóttir / University of Iceland, Fræðasetur

Kristín Loftsdóttir is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Iceland. She finished her PhD from University of Arizona in 2000. Her research focuses on postcolonialism, whiteness, gender, racial identity, mobility and crisis, specializing in Iceland and Europe. She has also conducted research on migrant work of indigenous community in Niger in West Africa and irregular migrants in Brussels. Loftsdóttir is co-organizer of the project "Mobilities and Transnational Iceland" that received grant of Excellence by RANNÍS – Icelandic Centre for Research in 2016-2018.

Ambivalent homecoming. Turf Houses and Iceland’s place in the World

06.09.18 / 8:30pm Ann-Sofie Nielsen Gremaud / University of Iceland, Fræðasetur

Ann-Sofie Nielsen Gremaud is a Danish/Swiss cultural historian who has specialized in the cross cultural field of Icelandic-Danish history. Gremaud holds a PhD and in her thesis she introduced a crypto-colonial perspective in the analysis of Icelandic visual culture. She has published on contemporary art, Danish colonial history and the Anthropocene. Gremaud is affiliated with the Department of Danish at the University of Iceland and a part of the international research project "Denmark and the New North Atlantic".

Opening Event

August 8, 2018

Gunnhildur Hauksdóttir

Tremorgraphs, 2018

Audio Performance

We welcome you all to an audio performance by Gunnhildur Sigrúnar Hauks at the Grótta Lighthouse for the opening of Earth Homing: Reinventing Turf Houses / TORF on August 8th. Ten voices and four dancers perform a vertical composition for voice and movement from selected tremor and earthquake measurements roughly corresponding with locations of turf farms in each part of Iceland. The seismic measurements have been translated into score for voices along with the ruffle of the dancers moving up and down the lighthouse. The performance lasts approximately for 13 minutes and please note that there is limited access. An audio recording of tremorgraphs will be installed inside the lighthouse for the duration of the exhibition.

Limited accsess 23 individuals for each performance

20.30, 21.00, 21.30, 22.00, 22.30 (according to demand)

Tremorgraphs was made for Earth Homing in July 2018 in collaboration with Hryndjandi,

woman’s choir, The Icelandic Meteorological office, Háskóladans and Lindy Ravers dance

association.

Seismic events and corresponding farm stets

(NV) Hjallur D. 01. km, ML. -8.0, (SA) Selið D. 5.0 km, ML 1.22, (SV) Keldur D. 3,5 km, ML. 0.69, (NA) Burstafell D. 4.4 km, ML. 2.23

Vocalists

Ásdís Magnea Þórðardóttir, Ásta Vilhjálmsdóttir, Birna Margrét Júlíusdóttir, Marta Valgeirsdóttir, Guðrún Arna Gylfadóttir, Kai Dobrowolska, Karina Hanney Marrero, Katrín Harðardóttir, Kristín Ástríður Ásgeirsdóttir, Sigríður Rósa Bjarnadóttir.

Dance

Ola Chlipala, Hadrien, Serena Chan, Gunnar Þór Einarsson.

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LOCATIONS AND OPENING HOURS

“Earth Homing” takes place at on the island of Grótta in Seltjarnarnes, Reykjavík from 8th August until 9th September, 2018. The opening is on Wednesday, August 8 from 8 – 11.30pm. Maps for locations on the nature preserve can be found at Raðagerdi.

Opening hours

Albertsbúð, Vitavarðarhúsið, Fræðasetur and the Lighthouse:

Friday – Sunday

Access to the island will depend on the changing tides.

Raðagerdi:

Friday – Sunday from 12 – 6pm

Please check Earth Homing on Facebook for the low tide schedule for Grótta.

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ORGANISERS

The exhibition is curated by Annabelle von Girsewald

With Administration Assistance of Marta Kolbuszewska