Reykjavík Grapevine - 16.03.2018, Side 24

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In 2017, three artists, friends, and col-
laborators—Eva Ísleifs, Katrín Inga
Jónsdóttir Hjördísardóttir and Rakel
McMahon—met up at an apartment
in Athens during a particularly hot
summer. They were recipients of that
year’s “artist’s salary”—a grant of
public money awarded annually to Ice-
landic creatives, in various fields, to
experiment, develop, and expand their
practise.
The three entered into an explor-
atory discussion and negotiation of
what they would produce together.
“When we met, we were all coming
from different angles—different col-
laborations, and different exhibitions
of our solo work,” says Katrín. “We had
to first decide what we wanted to do,
and why we wanted to work together.”
Realising that this collaborative
environment could act as a release
from their solo practises, the idea
they arrived at, on the surface, could
not be simpler. They would draw each
other. “We were all craving a pure
creativity—a pencil, or working with
our hands,” says Katrín. “So much of
art is meetings, emails, budget plans
and proposals. We wanted to free our-
selves from all that. So we settled on
drawing, and ended up creating this
self-made workshop.”
Freeing process
As they started to draw, they discussed
what they wanted from the collabo-
ration and how they wanted to spend
their time together. The idea devel-
oped, and soon the three had disrobed
in the apartment; they started to pro-
duce life drawings, with each acting as
both life model and artist in an act of
private performance.
“Sometimes when you’re working
in collaboration, you go further than
you’d be able to alone, and let yourself
go,” says Katrín. “We al-
lowed ourselves to use
clichés. Using the naked
body is a cliché in per-
formance, but we al-
lowed ourselves to use
it, and that gave us a lot
of freedom.”
As the artists sank
into the process, they
also started to realise it was freeing
them up in other more personal ways.
“Being naked isn’t easy,” continues
Katrín. “Even when you know and
trust each other, it’s challenging. Even
with your lover, there are elements
of your body that you’re perhaps not
comfortable with. But when you’re na-
ked like this and free yourself of nega-
tive thoughts towards yourself, some
gates open up. You reach a more pure
creativity, without the complexity of
acting. Maybe you’re sleeping naked,
cooking naked, writing emails naked.
Maybe it’s good for us to be naked as
often as we can.”
The female nude
The three artists talked together con-
stantly about the wide range of issues
that the work opened
up. “From one line to
another, we found the
purpose of what we were
doing,” says Katrín.
“We talked all the time.
It started out with us
thinking about work-
ing in the studio, but it
became a performance,
and then we thought about how to
turn this performance back into ob-
jects. It was a way for us to spend time
Words: :
John Rogers

Photos:
Courtesy of the
artists
“I think for
most artists
it’s a painful
experience
to perform.”
An exploration of intimacy and gender through nudity and drawing
Get Naked
Every Day
Three female artists combine in ‘About Looking’—
a deceptively simple exhibition that creates as many
questions as answers

Culture