Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.05.2017, Page 23

23The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 07 — 2017
Words: John Rogers Photos: Rut Sigurðardóttir
FEATURE
Elín Hansdóttir stands in front
of a wall of flowers. She exam-
ines them closely, leaning in to
see the details, her fingers me-
ticulously tracing the edges of
the petals in each of the pho-
tographs pinned to her studio
wall. “I’ve become really inter-
ested in still life from the 17th
and 18th century,” she says. “I
read somewhere that some of
these bouquet arrangements
are assembled—they’re collag-
es of flowers that bloom at dif-
ferent times of the year. So it’s
fictional.”
The pictures are source material
for ‘Simulacra’, a piece that recently
showed at Iceland’s premier contem-
porary art dealer, i8. Glancing through
the large windows of the gallery, a
passerby might not notice the intrin-
sic paradox of the work: a series of pho-
tographs of a large bouquet hanging in
the same space that is, in reality, occu-
pied by the room’s solid central pillar.
Upon closer inspection, it becomes
apparent that the flowers are an illu-
sion: both the bouquet and the scene
were hand-painted onto glass, which
was then positioned in front of the
camera, creating a fictionalised pho-
tograph of the space.
“It was a strange show,” laughs Elín.
“I really enjoyed working on it. For the
last two years I’ve been obsessed with
this glass painting method used in
film. The craft grew during the first
World War. There was a shortage of
money and materials to build film
sets, so the studios built up depart-
ments of people painting photorealis-
tic paintings on little pieces of glass, to
create these grand backgrounds.”
“It’s a beautiful attitude towards
creating something so incredibly
simple,” she continues. “This moment
where we suspend our disbelief, set
rational thought aside, and make a
pact with ourselves to go with the illu-
sion...” She pauses, and smiles. “That’s
really interesting.”
WITHOUT LANGUAGE
Elín has made a name for herself over
the last decade creating disorientating
interventions like this one, in a variety
of media. Her studio is littered with
draft versions and remnants of previ-
ous works, from colourfully painted
Voronoi tessellations, to the flower
wall, to crumpled up grids inspired by
the techniques of pioneering photog-
rapher Eadweard Muybridge.
“I’ve worked with installation, films
and photography,” she says. “I’m a Sag-
ittarius who needs to try new things
out. It’s a risky way of working—some-
times these works succeed in becom-
ing independent from what I have in
mind. And sometimes they don’t.”
This open-ended and evolving ap-
proach means that, to some degree,
Elín starts from square one each time
a work is completed, and the next be-
gins. Each piece requires a reassess-
ment, refinement, evolution or adap-
tation of her artistic language. But it’s
a method Elín feels comfortable with.
“It’s a way of expressing things
without language,” she says. “A large
part of our surroundings are text-
based—news, and communication. I
was so relieved to find a way of com-
municating not through language.”
STRANGE COUNTRIES
The root of this thinking comes, per-
haps, from her childhood. Elín was
raised overseas, her parents having
moved the family to mainland Europe
when she was two years old. “I grew
up in another small, strange country
called Luxembourg, which is very dif-
ferent to Iceland,” she says. “It’s heav-
ily Catholic, very religious, and gender
roles are quite extreme. In the late 70s
and early 80s, there was a lot of unem-
ployment in Iceland. They just wanted
The Known Unknown
Elín Hansdóttir steps outside of everyday life
“I was finishing up, pulling out the plugs,
creating a darkness as I went”