Reykjavík Grapevine - 02.06.2017, Qupperneq 29

Throughout her growing success,
Hrafnhildur and her husband and
children have remained based in
New York. “I’m still so in love with
the city,” she says. “It’s welcoming
and inspiring, and you can make it
your own. It can also be very tough
on you when you have the wind in
your face, and it did become hard
during a certain period of time.
But I worked myself through it.”
SHEER ABSURDITY
The colourful, celebratory nature
of Shoplifter’s output is a knowing
response to hardship, almost like a
philosophical riposte to life’s diffi-
culties. Through embracing colour
and absurdity, her work offers an
alternative perspective.
“I feel like my role is to pump this
energy into the world,” she says. “If
my artwork lifts people’s spirits
because of the colour therapy, and
texture, and the sheer absurdity
of what I make, good. It’s good to
be serious, but I don’t want to be
ceremonious. I don’t mind being a
clown, and being grotesque. I don’t
have to be ladylike. Life is too pre-
cious to act precious.”
A few days later, the show opens,
and hundreds of people join the
party, laughing as they pluck day-
glo fibres from their friends’ cloth-
ing in a surreal grooming ritual.
The installation has grown, with
extra limbs spreading across the
room, and a long, hairy tendril
hanging down over the doorway.
“I love surprises,” smiles Hrafn-
hildur, in the midst of the throng.
“I don’t want to think too much
about the future. Because
I’m so excited to
find out.”
You had to be iron-clad in old jeans
and beat up t-shirts to keep up with
the guys. I was much more playful
and into fashion and self image."
NATURE TAKING OVER
This outlook served her well when,
after taking part in some group
shows with her ‘Vanity Disorder’
series, Hrafnhildur was invited to
show in a narrow window space at
the front of New York’s Museum
of Modern Art. She spent a fran-
tic week sourcing materials and
clambering around in the tiny
space between two panes of glass,
the process of installation becom-
ing an unwitting performance for
passersby.
The resulting work remained in
the space for over a year, catching
the eye of Alana Heiss, the influ-
ential curator and the founder of
PS1. “She invited me to show in the
Clocktower gallery,” says Hrafn-
hildur. “It’s a working clock tower
with these gargoyles outside. There
was a metal structure inside, like a
readymade skeleton, and I suggest-
ed covering it with hair. It was my
first large-scale installation, and it
took me months to do it.”
Alana also introduced Hrafnhil-
dur to arcadian paintings. “The
piece became very much about
weeping willow, and things be-
ing overgrown, like vines creep-
ing up houses,” she remembers.
“It’s nature taking over—like an
organism, or a disease. Sometimes
people see a piece of mine for the
second time, and I haven’t changed
it, but they feel like it’s grown.”
Since then, Hrafnhildur’s work
has received wide acclaim. She has
an ever-growing array of commis-
sions and plaudits from the main-
stream art and fashion media. In
2011 she received a medal for artis-
tic achievement presented by the
king of Sweden, and recently re-
leased a collaborative clothing line
with the & Other
Stories fashion
brand.

29The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 09 — 2017
“I don’t mind being
a clown, and being
grotesque. I don’t have
to be ladylike. Life is
too precious to act
precious.”