Reykjavík Grapevine - feb. 2021, Síða 13

13 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 02— 2021
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“It’s kind of a word game,” Loji
Höskuldsson says when asked about
the piece he’s currently working on.
“So here in Iceland, we have this
mayonnaise brand. It’s kind of a
funny company, it’s called Gunnars
majones (‘Gunnar’s Mayonnaise’),
so first I made a huge bucket of
mayonnaise, Gunnar’s mayon-
naise.”
“But then there’s also—and it’s
not related to Gunnar’s mayon-
naise—a brand called Gunnars
kleinuhringir (‘Gunnar’s Donuts’).
Not the same Gunnar,” he contin-
ues, a big grin lighting up his face.
“So this picture is about me going
to a guy called Gunnar’s house for
brunch. And so it’s me at Gunnar’s
house for Gunnar’s brunch eating
Gunnar’s mayonnaise and Gunnar’s
donuts.”
Enter Icelandicana
Loji is known for these sorts of works.
In his art, he explores the beauty of
the mundane, constantly referencing
old school “Icelandicana” and heri-
tage brands in inventive ways that
stir up those deep-seated memories
and emotions of times long gone.
Basically, he stitches nostalgia.
“I really like things that take
you back as a subject. You see them
and you say, ‘Oh! I remember!’” Loji
exclaims. “You’re not thinking about
them all the time, but when you see
them again, it brings you back.”
Even his chosen medium—
embroidery—is rife with nostalgia.
“I think everybody in Iceland has a
grandmother who stitched things
or memories of some embroidery
at their grandparent’s house. Every
person can relate to it,” he says. And
based on the reactions he gets to his
cosy, heartwarming works—he’s
right.
Look to the
milk cartons
With someone who spends so
much time looking back into the
ether, it’s perhaps natural that Loji
hasn’t been particularly personally
affected by the pandemic. Afterall,
nothing can change the past.
“In this time, in this pandemic,
when there’s nothing happening
really, I’m just trying to explore
more,” he shrugs. “I’ve mostly
been trying out new things in my
artwork—new stitches and motifs.”
He pauses, suddenly lost for words.
“Wow, maybe I’m the most boring
person in the world?”
(Yes, clearly the young artist
who just described a fantasy
involving two imaginary brand
mascots turned into one man
eating brunch with him, is the
most boring person in the world.)
But bring him back into the
past—and the world of Icelandi-
cana—and he’s no longer lost for
words. Right now, he explains,
his favourite nostalgic objects are
Icelandic milk cartons from the
90s.
“In Iceland, we only recently had
some new companies making milk.
We used to have only one company.
They changed their milk carton
design every 10 years or so, so if
you look at pictures and you see
milk cartons, you know what year
[it’s from],” he says gleefully. “This
design and that design—they bring
you back to an era.”
Over the course of the pandemic,
Sigur!ur Ámundason read Miguel
de Cervantes’ ‘Don Quixote’. “It’s
just this huge gigantic master-
piece,” he raves. “But according
to the prologue, Cervantes was so
excited to write it that he made a
few errors. There’s a scene with
Sancho Panza where he has a
donkey, then someone steals it,
but then later he’s on it again.”
Sigur!ur smiles brightly—as if he
himself has just seen a windmill
in the distance. “I love the idea
of a masterpiece being flawed.
It doesn’t have to be completely
perfect to be the first modern
novel ever written, as it’s called.”
Waving to the
wrong person
Sigur!ur’s work, he explains,
explores the monotonous strug-
gles of mankind. “Bad communi-
cation with people, awkwardness,
misunderstandings,” he lists. “You
know, you forget to say hello to
someone because you didn’t realise
it was them. That’s a small night-
mare and that’s what I’m inter-
ested in, so I try to blow them up
using heavy imagery to represent
the cringey moments of everyday
life.”
Through the many ups and
downs of the pandemic, Sigur!ur
found immense meaning in
the worldwide #BlackLivesMat-
ter protests in May and June. At
the time, he was working at the
National History Museum.
“There were no tours or guests
and we were surrounded by this
ancient art. Everything was going
on in the world but everything was
dead here. We were just stuck on
this island,” he relays.
For Sigur!ur, the protests
spurred on a moment of reflection
and empathy.
“It felt like there was nothing
you could really do because I didn’t
know that experience. As a white
man, I don’t know what that is,
but I wanted to,” he explains. “I’ve
never experienced the horrors
of war or racism but maybe we
can relate on some small things.
Maybe you have some awkward
communication with someone at
the protest and just feel horrible or
angry or frustrated because of that
and then you’re miserable. That’s
something we can all share. That’s
the commonality and that’s what
I want to explore with my art: the
mundane horrors that we all have.”
Finding commonality
Sigur!ur sees concentrating on
these small horrors—and the
shared humanity of it all—as the
key for those from more privi-
leged groups, who don’t have the
same experiences as those within
marginalised groups, to connect
with each other.
“If you see someone that looks
like you hurting someone that
doesn’t look like you, it’s easier for
people to see [the situation] from
the perspective of the [person]
they look like,” he continues. “But
instead of that, try to understand
and relate to the struggle of the
person that’s being harassed.
People really need to shift their
minds to relate to the pain in
others.”
#mir Grönvold spent the first six
months of the pandemic in Kath-
mandu, Nepal helping his uncle
undergo alternative rehabilitation
therapy. “We got locked down there
and then we ended up staying,” he
notes softly; his voice crisp and
light. “It was interesting because it’s
the most polluted city in the word,
but after a few days of lockdown,
you could see the mountains again.”
The problem of ego
#mir’s works are playful—large
scale paintings highly connected
to nature in a rather uplifting,
innocent way. In Nepal, he became
acquainted with thangka, a special
breed of Buddhist paintings. “They
are usually made by a lot of people.
No one person takes credit,” he
explains. “That was a really big
cultural difference. We’re so ego-
driven in the West. If you’re an
artist, it’s more about you, or at
least that’s how I sometimes see
it, but it was really beautiful to see
these collaborative paintings and
no one person taking credit...”
Almost fittingly—or perhaps
the opposite of fittingly—his next
exhibited piece will be an appropri-
ated sculpture for the ‘Raw Power’
exhibition at Hafnarhús, which puts
Erró’s work in dialogue with young
artists. #mir made the piece three
years ago, but it’s uncanny to hear
an artist jump from appropriated to
uncredited art in but a few minutes.
I suppose they are but opposite
approaches to the same problem:
ego.
Stay calm
#mir is calm. Everything he says
seems to come both from the heart
and off the cuff while also seem-
ing incredibly well thought out.
It’s weird to think about him even
grappling with the problem of ego.
According to #mir, 2020 has been a
year of personal growth. He wasn’t
always so centered.
“I can sympathise a lot with
people and I understand that some
people are having a crisis because
of the situation, but when people
say like 2020 sucked, it’s like ‘what
are you talking about? What do you
mean?’ I think people really think
they need to control everything,”
he says. “And when you are forced
to experience yourself—your own
thoughts and everything—it’s
understandable that some people
can suffer.”
For #mir, the cure was mind-
fulness. “There is a shift that
happens in people's conscious-
ness. That’s why all these monks
are meditating, why people do this
stuff because there’s a shift that
happens in people when their pres-
ence becomes the forefront of their
life—not the person they think they
are, but who they actually are,” he
explains.
#mir hopes the pandemic will
push more people down the path
of being more present. “My feel-
ing is that more people are more
conscious,” he explains. “More and
more are becoming vegan. There’s
more sensitivity to other’s feelings.
But maybe that’s just totally my
world.”
LOJI HÖSKULDSSON
SIGUR!UR ÁMUNDASON
#MIR GRÖNVOLD