Reykjavík Grapevine - feb. 2021, Síða 11

11 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 02— 2021
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“I just think that time slowed down
for me, which was kind of positive,”
Una Björg Magnúsdóttir says of her
2020 experience. “But in general,
time just slowed down. There were
so many periods of last year so it’s
weird to look back at March and
what we thought then.” She pauses,
shrugging. “But we judge based on
what we know now.”
Unconscious reactions
Una’s works are potentially the
most reliant on in-person inter-
actions of everyone featured.
Looking at pieces like her last exhi-
bition at Hafnarhús in early 2020
entitled ‘Vanishing Crowd’, and it’s
hard to imagine how she could,
or did, transfer such all-encom-
passing sensual experiences into
pandemic-friendly digital plat-
forms—though she did manage to
find ways.
“I do sculptures and installa-
tions that kind of play with your
assumptions, anticipation and
disappointment,” she explains.
“Oftentimes, I like to present
something that is quite familiar to
viewers so that you almost decide
immediately that you know what
you’re looking at. So there’s a phys-
ical reaction—your body reacts
before you’re conscious of it.”
“Like with ‘Vanishing Crowd’,
when people enter, the installation
is so simple that you’re not even
sure it’s an exhibition, but then
there are small hints that show you
that everything is put there inten-
tionally,” she continues carefully.
“So even though you’ve decided
when you go in there that it’s really
simple—just a lobby or a waiting
room—it’s completely constructed.
It’s fake. Basically you see both
sides, like a magic trick.”
New specialisations
With art that’s so heavily reli-
ant on subjective, small experi-
ences, it’s natural to see how Una
adopted a role as an observer in
the pandemic. While she was, of
course, interested in how the art
world reformatted itself to fit new
platforms, she was, perhaps, more
engrossed by the ways the world as
a whole did.
“I was quite fascinated all year
with things like the people who
are, say, recording funerals or
something like that,” she explains.
“I feel like things like that are the
things that are going to last or keep
on going.” She pauses, acknowl-
edging both the ludicrousness and
morbidity of the example.
“You know, you take the clichés
of how you record something,
like how you record opera that is
streamed online. It’s not recorded
like concerts, it’s recorded in a
special way by professionals that
specialise in recording operas,” she
continues. “Will there now be a
specialised way of recording funer-
als? Of course, it’s awkward if it’s
badly filmed.”
She lets out a stark laugh—and
you can’t help imagine that yes, it’d
be incredibly awkward to watch a
funeral filmed by someone who
specialises in, say, celebratory
wedding videos.
But when asked about the
post-pandemic art world, Una
is most excited to get back to the
fully-fledged in-person museum
experience. “It’s like going abroad
and then coming home. And
even though everything is exactly
the same—you expect it to be
different—but it’s the same,” she
concludes, smiling. “Everything is
just a little bit newer.”
“I’ve heard that it takes 20 years
to process current events, so
maybe in 20 years, we will have a
lot to say dissecting this,” Au!ur
Lóa Gu!nadóttir relays; her voice
crackling over Zoom. “I think the
future has never been so uncertain
and people more unsure of what’s
going to happen.” She smiles as
her face freezes for a moment—
a perfect pandemic interview
moment if ever there was one.
Rise of the
introverts
Au!ur is known for her pint-sized
sculptures, which run the gamut
from the cute to the absurd. Think
of cats in sweaters and relics of
Princess Diana—one of Au!ur's
obsessions, who she describes as
“the perfect anti-hero”—and you’ll
get an idea of the kind of spectrum
you can expect from Au!ur.
A self-described introvert,
she cheekily admits that she has
thrived within the restrictions of
the pandemic. “I’ve heard some
people say that they had a hard
time creating inside the vacuum,
but I’m not having a problem with
that,” she explains. “I work mainly
with motifs that I source online
anyway and COVID has been a
really good time for the internet so
I’ve just been surfing the internet
and seeing how that’s evolving.”
Currently, she’s preparing for an
upcoming solo show at Hafnar-
hús entitled ‘Yes/No’, opening on
March 18th.
TikToks & crowns
That said, Au!ur has been enter-
tained by the chaos an introverted
lifestyle has caused others. “It’s
been funny to watch other people
deal with this situation,” Au!ur
says, a small smile lighting up her
face. “Making TikToks and writ-
ing articles about how to be alone
or work alone. That’s like all I do!”
She laughs. To be clear, her voice is
full of care—if there’s any schaden-
freude, it’s a loving kind.
There is no doubt, however, that
Au!ur’s sculptures are extroverted
beings. “I like people to see them
in real life. It’s a different connec-
tion,” she illustrates. “Because I
work on a particular scale—small
works and stuff—I feel like people
can connect to them on an intimate
level when they are in their pres-
ence.”
But while Au!ur thrived within
the confines of the pandemic, we
wonder whether she would have
thrived within the confined life of
her idol, Princess Diana?
“No, it seems awful,” she says
seriously. “I don’t think I would
prosper in that, but I think the
spectacle of it really intrigues me.”
We then dive into a conversation
about Diana’s life—her fame and
her solitude, the latter of which
is perhaps not unlike most in the
world nowadays. “For her, it must
have been a really weird feeling,”
Au!ur concludes. “Being so loved
but also being so alone.”
When I spoke
w i t h He l en a
Margrét Jóns-
dóttir, it’s the
day before the
opening of her
first solo exhi-
bition, entitled
‘Draugur uppúr
ö!rum draug'
( ‘ A G h o s t
O f A n o t h e r
Ghost’) at Hverfisgallerí.
“When you see someone who
looks really bad, in Icelandic you
say they look like a ghost of another
ghost,” Helena explains. “So I was
working with that state of being,
like a person who is almost a
shadow of herself. She’s not really
present. She’s see-through.”
Aesthetically, Helena played
with these notions by blurring the
lines between flat backgrounds and
two-dimensional details—eventu-
ally ending up with a series of large
blue-scale works featuring every-
thing from disconnected limbs
and Draumur candy bars to shiny
spiders on tongues.
“The work I was doing previously
was all about longing. I would have
these long hands that were tangled.
So it was like you’re getting in your
own way. You’re being so compli-
cated about, you know, getting a
candy bar,” she says, referring back
to the aforementioned Draumur
candy bars. “This was in a direct
line from that, but now, instead
of tackling yourself, you’re kind of
invisible.”
Ghosts with the jokes
The exhibition is relatable, fitting
within the 2020-21 vibe—everyone
has had their fair share of ghost-
of-a-ghost moments in lockdown.
But it’s Helena’s interplay of
humour and tragedy that feels
particularly poignant. “I have
these dark subjects, these ghosts
and spiders that are tradition-
ally connected to horror, but I
wanted them to be humorous,” she
explains. It’s this comical look at
tragedy that’s emblematic of the
pandemic zeitgeist.
“Getting through unpleasant or
tough moments with humour and
seeing the hilarity in them, that’s
the only way to do it, because what
is the other option?” Helena says.
And in the face of wide-scale prob-
lems like a worldwide pandemic,
impending climate change and
political unrest, Helena’s right.
What is the other option?
“These are such big concepts
that you can’t really do anything
about as an individual, so the
only thing you can do, instead of
despairing and living under your
bed for a whole year...” she laughs,
before shrugging. “You kind of have
to look at the funny side.”
UNA BJÖRG MAGNÚSDÓTTIR
AU!UR LÓA GU!NADÓTTIR
HELENA MARGRÉT JÓNSDÓTTIR