Reykjavík Grapevine - 08.12.2017, Page 26

Each artist must determine the mo-
ment when a new piece of art feels fin-
ished and ready to be revealed to the
world. For Anna Rún Tryggvadóttir, a
visual artist whose exhibition ‘Garður’
is currently on display at Reykjavík Art
Museum, a piece can never really be
completed. It relies on the process itself.
‘Garður,’ the Icelandic word for gar-
den, can evoke domesticated nature,
such as a suburban home’s lawn, or
wilderness and mountain ranges in a
different context. The main compo-
nents are Icelandic rocks from Sun-
dahöfn harbour, which Anna Rún
sculpted and treated with materials.
Suspended above these rocks, con-
tainers of coloured liquid are rigged
to drip every hour, watering them and
changing their appearance. Slowly they
transform both in colour and in tex-
ture, as chemical compounds on the
rocks, like salt, react to the stimuli.
Authority & powerlessness
Anna Rún’s central philosophy is
rooted in the state of absolute author-
ity over a situation while being com-
pletely powerless to control it at the
same time. “It’s a sort of friction that
I find exciting and can be present-
ed in many different ways,” she tells
me as we chat over cof-
fee in her Berlin home.
“It plays on how we
position ourselves to-
ward nature and how so-
ciety constantly demands
that we encroach upon it,”
Anna Rún explains. “It’s a
twisted spot we’re in. Sci-
entists are calling this era
the anthropocene—this
period of time from when
mankind started to signifi-
cantly impact the world.
We tend to define every-
thing from the perspec-
tive of humans and how
we understand and per-
ceive things. I try to mir-
ror our function down to a
material or even molecu-
lar level, through the use of mat-
ter we consider as being inanimate.”
Constant change
Growing up, Anna Rún benefited from
learning about different materials
and how the physical world functions.
She was fascinated by these subjects,
ranging from how electricity works to
the effects of yeast on dough. She says
that if it wasn’t for visual art, which
she studied in Reykjavík and Montreal,
she might have gone into chemistry.
The techniques applied by Anna Rún
inevitably lead to the artwork morph-
ing from day one up until the final day
of the exhibition. Many artists tend to
be protective of their final product, but
she sees the process as a part of it, much
like a performance artist would. “I find
it more difficult to imagine handing in
something conclusive,” she says. “Vi-
sual artists run the risk of becoming
hermits, working alone unless they’re
in a collective. I try to be aware of not
becoming rigid and wanting to control
everything. I feel that everything is in
motion and nothing is solid. It’s been
a throughline in my work. Even when
I’ve created more traditional two-
dimensional art, which isn’t process-
based like this, it’s been the theme.”
Anna Rún argues that even when
artwork hasn’t changed visibly, the
viewer will have changed, to some de-
gree, since the last time they saw it.
“I love being able to revisit a piece
of art that has affected me, knowing
that it’s still there,” she says. “And
even if it triggers the same response
in me, there’s always a new experi-
ence to be had each time. I would
consider my exhibition to be a mate-
rial performance, where the piece ex-
ists in the moment it is being viewed.
Art doesn’t exist without the viewer,
and that applies to visual art as well.”
In the moment
Anna Rún and her husband, theatri-
cal director Þorleifur Örn Arnarsson,
made the move to
Berlin last year, af-
ter a long period of
working on projects
all over Europe while
keeping a home base
in Iceland. They’ve
spent time together in
Germany before and it
was there that Anna
Rún started doing set
design for Þorleifur’s
plays and discovered
the possibilities that
come with theatre.
“Þorleifur works in
a very open way and
creates a good ener-
gy within the group,
which results in free-
dom to do things your
own way within the collaboration,”
she says. “What I liked the most was
experiencing cooperation where you
stopped separating the individual from
the whole in the creative process—
feeling how the partition between you

Words:
Steindór Grétar
Jónsson
Photos:
Viktor
Richardson
gpv.is/culture
Share this online
“Visual
artists run
the risk of
becoming
hermits,
working
alone unless
they’re in a
collective.”
Culture
The artist is present: Anna Rún Tryggvadóttir
Everything
Is In Motion,
Nothing Is Solid
Anna Rún Tryggvadóttir creates visual art with the spirit
of theatre at Reykjavík Art Museum

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