Reykjavík Grapevine - 06.05.2011, Blaðsíða 26

26
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 5 — 2011 Hrafnhildur’s exhibition, Gray Area, is open until May 29 at The
Museum of Design and Applied Art, Garðatorg 1, 210 Garðabær.
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Reykjavík to New York transplant
Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir, or Shop-
lifter as she’s known outside of Ice-
land, has been making quite a dent
in recent years with her designs,
including a huge window display
in New York’s Museum Of Modern
Art. Her most recent exhibition,
Grey Areas, came on display during
DesignMarch at the Museum of De-
sign and Applied Art in Garðabær,
and details a collection of vari-
ous projects Shoplifter has been
involved with over her fascinating
career. She spoke to the Grapevine
about her place in the art world
and her love-hate relationship with
human hair, which features promi-
nently in her work.
SELF-DEFINITION
How would you describe yourself?
Mostly, I work as a visual artist, but
I’ve been battling the preconception
that different genres of art need to be
separated, you know, putting design in
one box… that there needs to be a gap
there.
In fact, I was going to ask you if you
were an artist or a designer.
That’s something I had to go through an
analysis of many years ago. I kind of fell
into design by accident; I was always
designing stuff for myself, and then my
friends liked it and wanted some too,
and you make one of those… but I’ve
never, ever wanted to be a mass pro-
duction fashion designer [laughs]. It’s
all very contradictory.
You’ve said in your interviews that
you’ve always been interested in
fashion design, but it’s not some-
thing you could ever dedicate your-
self to...
I don’t aspire to have a full-time job
designing clothes… I’m a flirt, is what
it is. I’m letting myself flirt with other
fields. It’s like an affair [laughs]. You
never want to say no, and you never
feel there’s any reason to. Why confine
yourself to working within a certain
framework, when there are so many
exciting things out there? For instance,
the Nordic House asked me to be cu-
rator for the next Nordic Fashion Bien-
nale, which will be in the Nordic Heri-
tage Museum in Seattle; it’ll feature
design and jewellery from the Faeroe
Islands, Greenland and Iceland. At first
it made little sense to me, so I of course
got interested. There’s a visual artist as
a curator, who has certain obsessions
with fashion and vanity and stuff like
that, just pop culture in general, re-
ally. At first I was like “I can’t take time
from art making to do this, I have two
kids and a bunch of exhibitions, I need
time alone in my studio, working.” Say-
ing “yes” to projects like this leaves you
with more than you can handle, men-
tally. At some point you have to start
being careful. I’m also my own boss,
and there’s only so much I’ll let myself
do [laughs].
FUTURE PROJECTS, PUBLIC PER-
CEPTION
I found that when I started doing visual
art, that you take yourself seriously, but
never formally. There’s a big difference
there. I take it all very seriously, all this
hair and stuff, but it’s also disgusting
and creepy. I’m making really sappy
lace stuff with hair, and it’s supposed
to be very beautiful and girly, but it’s
also nauseatingly disgusting… it’s re-
pugnant.
Does that come up a lot? Because I
know that hair makes a lot of peo-
ple queasy.
I aim at having people feel two things
at once. Maybe it’s an obsession I have
with contradictions. People are drawn
to it, it’s alluring and fanciful, like Vic-
torian or Baroque or something, at least
at first glance. Then when they realise
it’s made out of hair, they just [makes
face of someone about to vomit]. It’s
interesting to see which one wins out.
So it’s real hair?
A lot of it, but there’s a lot of artificial
hair as well.
Where do you get all that real hair?
I buy it from wholesalers in New York
who cater to hairdressers looking for
hair extensions. It’s human hair, in any
colour you can think of, neon and what-
not. When I first started working with
hair, I got really into black people’s hair
culture, and how it’s just at a complete-
ly different level, you know? Cornrows,
rap culture and pop culture, all that…
and this… obsession with your self-im-
age, how hair is a connection between
us and some kind of animal that we’re
trying to tame. We’re always trying to
tame our hair. Hair is like a weed that
grows on you. When I first got started,
I was doing all this ‘left and right hemi-
spheres of our brain,’ and pretending
to be drawing a map of how we think.
I imagined that hair was like ‘the gar-
bage of the mind,’ like an imaginary
sci-fi novel where you can take a hair
sample from somebody and read their
thoughts by decoding their DNA.
Sounds like it’d make a bitchin’ film.
Would you make a movie, some-
day? You’ve done video art and mu-
sic videos, so…
Yeah, I’d like to do some stop-motion
work. You’re familiar with filmmaker
Brad Grey? He’s making a new film
that’s inspired by my work with hair. It’s
very promising and creepy, so it’s to-
tally up my alley. I read ‘The Legend Of
The Ice People’ when I was a teenager,
and I don’t think I’ll ever forget those
books, Tengel the Evil… all that. It’s so
over-the-top and hilarious, but yet so
disgustingly creepy. In one of the books
there is a person whose hair moves and
kills [laughs]… brilliant! I always imag-
ined this incredibly hairy man, on whom
I could braid cornrows down his entire
body.
Is there something about hair, as a
medium, that you think cannot be
communicated in any other form?
Well, it started in art school, here in
Iceland, and I found everything very
limiting, medium-wise. I decided after
graduating that I would never confine
myself to any number of mediums. It’s
actually kind of strange that I ended up
being so closely associated with hair;
I never made a conscious choice to
make hair my signature medium.
Pictured: The family in their New York home:
Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir and her husband, in-
ventor Michal Jurewicz, posing in her sculp-
ture ‘The Hairy Hunch’ with their children
Máni Lucjan and Úrsúla Miliona.

Art | Shoplifter
SINDRI ELDON
SILJA MAGG
Shoplifter Interviewed
Taming The Animal