Iceland review - 2016, Qupperneq 63

ICELAND REVIEW 61
Painter, sculptor and set designer
Halla Gunnarsdóttir has
traveled the world, most recently
to the North Pole, to explore,
document and raise awareness of
the devastating effects of climate
change and human impact on the
environment. Now she is on a
mission to promote wildlife
conservation through poignant
and powerful visual storytelling.
When I first saw the manta
ray come toward me, I was
so taken with the beauty
of this animal,” says figurative sculp-
tor and painter Halla Gunnarsdóttir.
During a trip to Indonesia in 2012,
she went scuba-diving in the Pacific
Ocean and came face-to-face with a
majestic manta ray. For Halla, this brief
encounter helped her find a new artis-
tic direction and purpose. “It stopped
just in front of me and looked at me
for a while with such curiosity. These
encounters with animals change some-
thing within you, and I realized that
either I would hang up my sculpture
tools and change my profession to do
something within the field of conserva-
tion, or I would incorporate it into my
artwork.” Inspired and determined, she
chose the latter.
Halla’s most recent body of work,
entitled Look at Us, combines her pas-
sion for wildlife conservation with her
prodigious career as a figurative sculp-
tor and painter, resulting in haunting
portraits of endangered animals with
distinctively human features and poses.
“In the work, I want to show that what
separates us from animals is very little,”
she describes. “They are living beings
with souls; they have families; they
have feelings and they have language.
We have come so far in so many ways
but when it comes to understanding
animals we are still very ignorant.” By
imbuing her animal figures with identifi-
able human characteristics, she hopes to
convince her audiences to treat nature
and wildlife sustainably and respectfully,
and there is no place on earth she won’t
explore to drive this message home—
even remote South Georgia Island in
the southern Atlantic Ocean and the
forbidding North Pole.
EXPLORING THE ARCTIC
In order to visualize and render her
artistic vision of a world where animals
and humans coexist, Halla has journeyed
to numerous far-flung destinations to
observe and sketch endangered species
in their natural habitats. In September
2015, she joined a group of artists, pho-
tographers, scientists and musicians on
a voyage to the North Pole, organized
by Ocean Geographic, called Elysium
Artists. During the trip, this diverse
group of 60 professionals from 21 coun-
tries sought to document and capture
the effects of climate change through
their respective disciplines and fields of
study. Other noteworthy passengers on
this excursion included Dr. Sylvia Earle,
a world-famous oceanographer who
founded the Mission Blue initiative to
safeguard marine resources and wildlife,
and David Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes,
veteran underwater photographers from
National Geographic magazine.
“It was very encouraging to spend time
with a group of people who are using
visual storytelling for conservation,” she
reports. “If images aren’t brought to
people’s attention, then the out-of-sight-
out-of-mind mentality takes over, so I
think the trip on the whole opened my
mind to looking at conservation from
different viewpoints and reaffirmed my
belief in using my tools and trade to get
a message across.”
One of the most memorable moments
of the trip came when Halla and her
colleagues had yet another close wildlife
encounter; this time with one of nature’s
most vulnerable and endangered species.
“We sailed up to latitude 82, north of
Svalbard, which was the farthest north
we were able to go through the ice,” she
recounts. “A young male polar bear came
right up to our ship and stayed there,
curiously observing us for a long time. It
was truly one of those magic moments
and if ever I have been awestruck by
the presence of someone, it was on that
day. It’s unthinkable to imagine that
these animals could be gone in a few
decades because of climate change.” She
intends to collaborate with her fellow
Arctic travelers for an exhibition and
contribute to a project called Drawing
into the Arctic, which she describes as a
“large narrative drawing project about
the beauty and decline of the Arctic
region.” This exhibition will be shown in
several countries, and she hopes to bring
it to Iceland in the near future.
ART