Reykjavík Grapevine - 16.03.2018, Qupperneq 20

20 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 04 — 2018
Sitting on a low wooden panel that
runs along half the perimeter of Kjar-
valsstaðir’s Idea Lab, I draw my legs
inward and I look around me, my
eyes wandering over the aquamarine
décor, reminiscent of arabesque tiles.
Designer Guðfinna Mjöll Magnúsdóttir
lounges next to me slowly sipping her
tea, her iconic mane of white hair fall-
ing tidily onto her shoulders.
Guðfinna is best known for having
championed Icelandic wool for the
past 15 years through her design label
Vík Prjónsdóttir, whose distinctive
‘Wing’ and ‘Healing Hands’ scarves
and colourful ‘Sun Hats’ have become
synonymous with quality Icelandic
design. Not content with this success,
Guðfinna continued to expand her
horizons beyond the realm of fashion,
approaching various creative fields
through design, and becoming one of
the most established and multifac-
eted designers in Iceland. She’s also
the creative mind behind the Idea Lab,
which she designed in 2013 as a free
space for adults and children to make,
and be inspired by art. “I really love to
find the heartbeat for the projects that
I work on,” she explains. “Then you
know you have the passion for it.”
A matter of survival
For Guðfinna, design ultimately comes
down to passion—and, perhaps, a
tendency to take advantage of every
opportunity. With her overflow-
ing schedule chock-full with creative
sessions, lectures, studying and her
daily chores as a mother, at first glance
she could pass for an overly enthu-
siastic millennial who was told she
could and must have it all—job, family,
money. However, she’s more like the
poster child for 21st century indepen-
dent workers—always busy, always
on the run, and unable to slow down.
Although Guðfinna enjoys the perks
of being an established designer who’s
been active in the Icelandic creative
scene for almost 15 years, she feels the
industry is changing. Public institu-
tions see young people with too many
low-paid opportunities and fewer
long-term plans and look at them
as redundant. With soaring rents,
menial student loans and an increas-
ingly competitive market overflow-
ing with freelancers, the future looks
precarious for those who are looking
to survive in the Icelandic creative
scene. It’s become a matter of survival
for design itself: it must adjust to
the times and find a new place in
Icelandic society before it’s too late.
A right
to education
For a country that is slowly trying to
come to terms with crumbling insti-
tutions that are becoming obsolete at
an alarming rate, admitting that the
educational system also needs to be
spruced up is a difficult thing to digest.
For Guðfinna, however, we must start
there, weaving a sturdy safety net
around young students. “I’ve often
been on the edge of giving up in these
studies because it’s so hard to work
everything out,” she explains, referring
to both financial and personal difficul-
ties. “So that’s number one—to have a
system where students can really focus
on their studies.”
According to Guðfinna, in fact,
financial issues seem to arise long
before students acquire their degree,
and don’t necessarily get resolved
with time. “When I was studying at
the Iceland Academy of the Arts 14
years ago I could live off the student
loan—of course I was broke, but it still
worked,” Guðfinna says. “But I was in
huge shock to see how drastically this
has changed.” She’s referring to the fact
that students today have to work while
they study because of loans that are
effectively out of touch with the latest
social and urban development, with
amounts calculated for a Reykjavík that
doesn’t exist anymore.
This means that students, whether
they have a family to support or not,
can never invest enough time in their
studies. “They’re not in full focus,”
Guðfinna says, adding that Iceland is
also on the verge of making access to
education a privilege rather than a
right. “We’re excluding some groups
from being able to study and that’s also
a serious problem. I’m not sure if the
Ministry of Education realises this.”
The pressure is on
Things don’t always seem to get better
after graduating. If Iceland was once a
haven for creative minds, it’s suddenly
being catapulted into the real world
without a life jacket, or even a miser-
able raft.
It’s worth mentioning that design-
ers can apply for grants just as artists,
novelists and poets do. They do have
the opportunity to take as many proj-
ects as they want and they can enjoy
a flexible work environment. Finally,
they can take advantage of unique
opportunities such as DesignMarch,
which seeks to support the Icelandic
design and art scene with lectures,
workshops and open exhibitions. Yet
compared to the local music scene—
which fares so much better without
financial help from the government—
design seems to be the weakest link in
the local creative chain, whether it’s
fashion or product design.
“We never lived from Vík Prjónsdót-
tir,” Guðfinna confirms, referring to
herself and her collaborators Þuríður
Rós Sigurþórsdóttir and Brynhildur
Pálsdóttir. “We wanted to work on
more projects but we also had to be
able to get a proper income. So through
the years, it has always been a matter
of juggling two, three, maybe four proj-
ects at a time.” And while Guðfinna
cherishes all the opportunities that
have been presented to her, she also
admits that it’s nigh-on impossible for
her to say no to projects because her job
is at the mercy of time.
Like the little ant that puts away
food in the warmer months to be able
to eat in the winter, she and many other
designers have to be able to compromise
to be able to live off their work. “These
are things that you don’t think of when
you are newly graduated, but with time,
when you experience life, you get sick
or have a baby, you realise how impor-
tant that is,” she explains. “If you’re an
independent worker there is no back-
up. No safety net. That’s difficult—it
sometimes makes you want to give up.”
A single mother
Guðfinna experienced this kind of
breakthrough long after her gradua-
tion, and once she’d had a baby. That’s
how she spotted the biggest conun-
drum in the local design scene: that
despite being part of a network of
independent workers, you can still feel
extremely alienated in the marketplace.
In particular, she was struck by the
lack of a union to protect independent
workers and provide information on
insurance, pensions and parental leave.
As a single mother, Guðfinna felt
especially antagonised. “When I had
my boy four years ago, I got scraps in
parental leave,” she says. “I’m used to
low wages, but that shocked me. I had
never experienced being so broke, and
it makes you feel like you can’t survive.
I felt like society was telling me not to
have kids because it made everything
much more difficult.”
“We never lived from Vík Prjóns-
dóttir. We wanted to work on more
projects but we also had to be able
to get a proper income.”
Guðfinna's acclaimed ceramics were honored with a
postage stamp in 2016