STARA - 14.11.2015, Blaðsíða 51

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Why are you a visual artist?
There are many reasons for it,
and probably a lot of coincidences
along the road. Perhaps I chose
this route because I see art as a
medium that allows me to work
with different and miscellaneous
layers of time, history and man’s
effect on the environment. At the
same time it is a way to examine
how political history is manifested
in fragments in constructed and
natural environment, and the pro-
cess of identity formation. I see art
as one way to dissect society and
language, and to criticize world
views.
Your Influences
I am influenced by various things,
writing, history, architecture and
art. During grad school I had the
opportunity to work with Sam
Durant, who often works with me-
morials, monuments and protest
in his work, and Charles Gaines,
who I assisted in his studio after
graduation. In his work, Charles
analyzes political history. I worked
closely with both of them for my
MA thesis and out of that process
and conversation I get interested
in certain methods, comparing
narratives of how identity forma-
tion is partly based on fiction and
performance, which I developed
further and still am concerned
with today. The list of influences
could get long, but when I think
about it, I’d include names like
the historian Norman Klein, who
wrote The History of Forgetting,
spring to mind, the work of Ed-
ward Said and many others. I have
worked on several collaborative
projects which always provide new
ways to look at things. I often look
to works by artists, architects and
scholars like Rachel Whiteread,
Harun Farocki, Gerhard Richter,
Mary Kelly, Mona Hatoum, Maja
Bajevic, Noam Chomsky, W.G. Se-
bald, Patricia Fernandez, Candice
Breitz, David Chipperfield, Denise
Scott Brown and Robert Venturi.
Where do you get your inspiration?
Inspiration comes from different
directions. I am very interested in
buildings that were at one time in
their history considered a mani-
festation of the very ideology of
the society that shaped them. In
the 2013 project, Part of a Part of a
Part, I was investigating the study
of the former home of Walter
Gropius, architect and principal of
the Bauhaus art school in Dessau.
The house, built in the mid 1920’s
became an emblem of Modernism.
After WWII it was left in ruins
by a bombing raid. Later, some
ambiguity surrounds the narrative,
whether to rebuild the house or
deface it and build a house com-
pliant with the climate in the city
planning of the then East German
town. The result was the building
of a traditional and familiar subur-
ban house with a sloping roof and
stucco walls, mixed with elements
from the simple, clear and austere
house of Gropius. Some previous
parts of the house were so to say
cannibalized, such as the base-
ment. I made this the focus of my
research, and examined the foun-
dation of the house after the later
house was torn down. A large part
of my work is to look at the places
where different periods intersect.
What projects are on the horizon?
I have a diverse period ahead
of me. I am working on several
publications and exhibitions at the
moment as well as the research
project Infinite Next. The exhibi-
tions will take place next year, i.a.
at the Pro Artibus Foundation in
Finland, The Human Resources
Gallery in Los Angeles and the St.
Paul St. Gallery in Auckland, New
Zealand. I will be spending the
autumn of this year in residence
in order to prepare and execute
research work for these upcoming
exhibitions. There, I will address
some issues of time and questions
about how change comes about,
and the conditions active during
paradigm shifts. Infinite Next is
a continuing project which began
last year at the initiative of art-
ist Anna Líndal. In the project
we examine climate change from
a historical, psychological and
political perspective. We spent the
summer of 2015 in Greenland in
residence at Ilulissat Art Museum
and participated in Climate Days,
an international science confer-
ence about climate change. We
gave a lecture on our research
methods and discussed artis-
tic research methods as ways to
reflect on changes in the environ-
ment and questions around the
Anthropocene. The project will
continue and next spring we will
organize a group exhibition at the
Living Art Museum, along with
Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir and Mark
Wilson, Hildigunnur Birgisdóttir,
Amy Howden-Chapman and Pilvi
Takala. Next summer, I will stay in
residence in Turkey and observe
and participate in an excavation
of ancient Greek buildings. It is
a continuation of a project I did
with the Art History Museum in
Vienna last year, where I examined
the history of the museum and
the building itself. That research
uncovered that parts of buildings
excavated in the city of Ephesus in
Turkey were at one point cut down
and repurposed as pedestals for
statues and placed in the museum
in the 19th century. This project
sprang from that discovery, focus-
ing on the questions of the power
of museums, the history of looting
and appropriation, about how his-
torical narratives are constructed
and of the invisible story of objects
around us.