Reykjavík Grapevine - 21.06.2013, Qupperneq 30

30The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 8 — 2013
We are having a conversation about
her art and her life and how these
things came together to place her in
Venice at that very moment. Katrín
Sigurðardóttir’s work exudes an aura
of highly focused intelligence and
years of study, and her published
interviews usually reflect this—hers
is a high art, one that can leave the
amateur at a loss when it comes
to engaging in discourse about it.
Throughout our talk I often feel
stunned and stupid, yet I am left with
a sense of lingering satisfaction, like
it’s slowly making me smarter.
When I am not embarrassing my-
self by asking flighty questions in-
volving concepts I barely understand,
I instead embarrass myself by asking
naïve questions that must have the
artist squirming. Questions like: “are
you nervous and stressed for the big
show?” This might be appropriate for
a little sister before her dance recital,
but to a successful and enduring art-
ist whose career has progressed from
one peak after the other—an artist
educated in respected art establish-
ments, one who recently displayed
her work at New York’s Metropoli-
tan Museum of Art (viewed by some
180,000 people!) and one who has
been chosen by Iceland’s art estab-
lishment to represent the nation—
they must sound utterly daft.
But Katrín takes it in stride, her pa-
tience with a terminally pretentious
journalist perhaps reflecting the pa-
tience required by her creative pro-
cess; her work is intricate, mapped,
studied, thought-out, requiring vast
amounts of historical and technical
research and months upon months
to execute.
And quite a few conversations to
discuss.
“Two days and
my entire life”
Six weeks ago, Katrín was with those
cats, on that square, in Venice, en-
gaging in conversation with The
Grapevine over Skype (our mission
to meet her at her Long Island City,
NY, studio earlier this year failed be-
cause of traffic, although we did get
some nice photos out of it). The idea
was to discuss her art and her career
and her exhibition at the 55th edition
of the ultra prestigious Venice Bien-
nale, which opened on Saturday,
June 1. We start by discussing the
installation process, then at its crux:
“We are not completely done,”
Katrín says, “but we are very close.
Quantifying an installation like this
can be difficult, especially when you
are installing a work for the first time.
You aren’t done until you’re done—
you can be finished with everything
save for some minor detail that takes
maybe three seconds to execute, but
one might have to wait for a month
to be ready for that three second mo-
ment of completion. It’s the nature
of the creative process...”
What has the preparation
entailed?
The process of creating this piece
has spanned more than eighteen
months. The beginnings of its con-
ception were in October of 2011, and
the entirety of 2012 was dedicated
to it. I spent the first year drawing,
only drawing. Then some material
tests were made, followed by some
visits to the site in Venice to figure
out this large shape that I am mak-
ing. For the majority of the time
leading up to the work’s completion,
I was drawing, on the computer and
by hand. Having conceived the work
that way, I commenced the fabri-
cation of the actual surface those
drawings denote. The ‘proper’ ma-
terial production began in Novem-
ber of last year.
The undertaking of this project
has been smooth, all things consid-
ered. Perhaps it is because it comes
right on the heels of another large
exhibit that I staged at the Metro-
politan Museum of Art in 2010. I feel
like I am well rehearsed. This time
around I didn’t have the problem
that we artists sometimes struggle
with, of having to wait a long time
for the right idea of what to create—
the gestation period for a work of art
can be quite drawn out.
It reminds me of something my
colleague and sometimes technical
consultant Hjörtur Hjartarson—a
great painter who was my right hand
man in staging this project—likes to
say about the making of his paint-
ings: ‘Well, it took me two days, and
my entire life.’ I think that kind of de-
scribes the process of creation, in the
sense that any work of art you make
builds on your whole life. Every pre-
ceding moment in your artistic de-
velopment and production is part of
the process and its end result.”
Arctic expedition
Do you suffer stress or perfor-
mance anxiety, of pulling it all
together in time for such a large
and seemingly pivotal event?
Not really, to be honest, for some
reason I don’t. I expected I would,
but that’s not how I feel. To reference
my last project at the Metropolitan
Museum again, I staged two instal-
lations that in many ways I had much
less time to prepare for, so when I
began the process for this show I felt
ready and levelled in a way. I felt in
good practice.
Long-term involvement in any-
thing that demands such intense
thought processes and labour
seems like it must be daunting.
How is it to sink yourself into
the creative process, into a sin-
gle project, for a year and half?
Does it change your mode of
thinking in a way? At the start,
you feel like you’re going under,
as if embarking on a yearlong
stint on a submarine?
I was thinking more like a polar expe-
dition [laughs]. Undertaking a proj-
ect like this is in some ways like ven-
turing on a big journey with a small
group of people. Your friends and
The Emotion Of Cold, Hard Science
Katrín Sigurðardóttir employs a different alphabet for her poetry
by Haukur S. Magnússon
Artist Katrín Sigurðardóttir is in-between three cats, on a square, in Venice. All three cats stare at her intently. She beckons them
over using the international language of kitty-beckoning. The Venetian cats continue looking at her, eternal feline mystery in their
eyes, but make no motion to come closer. A church bell gongs a single gong, a flock of cackling seagulls takes flight, the cats
stare on and we eventually continue conversing over the internet—me in the United States of America, and she in-between three
cats, on a square, in Venice.
Art
“Undertaking
a project like
this is in some
ways like ven-
turing on a big
journey with
an small group
of people. ”
Photos: Julia Staples
Continues over
The answer to the fun trivia question is A) Suitable only for 4x4s. ("Roads to nowhere" are common in the
more remote Reykjavík suburbs. Areas where there is danger of running into (and running over sheep),
are marked by warning signs featuring a sheep silhouette.)