The Icelandic Canadian - 01.03.2003, Page 17

Vol. 57 #4
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
153
The Substance of Remembering
The paintings of G.N. Louise Jonasson
by Anne Brydon
Pu manst hvernig for, pegar formold
var unnin
og fallinn var Surtur og goSheimur
brunninn
og jorS okkar hrunin og himnarnir
mu,
svo heimur og sol var3 a3 groa upp a3
nyju:
Pad geymdist f>o nokku3, sem a var3
ei unni3
af eldinum — gulltoflur, pxr hof5u ei
brunni3.
Vi3 sitjum her, Kanada, i sumars pins
hlynning
og solvermdu grasi a3 alika vinning;
Hver gulltafla er islenzk endurmin-
ning.
You remember how it ended, when
ancient times were defeated
and the giant Surtur was felled and the
world of the gods burned,
and our world ruined and the nine
heavens,
so the world and the sun had to grow
anew:
Something remained however, which
was not destroyed
by the fire — golden tablets, they had
not burned.
We are sitting here, Canada, in the
warmth of your summer
and in the sun-warmed grass, with a
similar reward;
Each golden tablet is an Icelandic
memory.
- Stephan G. Stephansson (1902)
In this closing stanza of his Speech in
Verse for the Toast to Canada, Stephan G.
Stephansson dramatises emigration from
Iceland to western Canada during the last
quarter of the 19th century. He refers to
the world’s ongoing cycle of destruction
and renewal at Ragnarok, when the old
gods of Asatru battle their enemies and the
established order is overturned. Golden
tablets, symbols of rebirth, survive the fire.
Memories of Iceland amongst those who
depart their homeland are like those golden
tablets, brought to the new world where
they enter into the creation of new cultural
expressions.1
The paintings by G.N. Louise Jonasson
exhibited at KjarvalsstaSir under the title
Island Souvenir can be thought of as the
return to Iceland of a few of those tablets.
The exhibition is comprised of three sepa-
rate works: Island (1989-97) consists of one
painting divided into four parts; Island
Souvenir I - XX (1997-2000) of five paint-
ings, each divided into four parts; and
Banner with Lance (1989-94). As the years
spent in their creation attest, these works
are the culmination of extensive thinking
about artistic, intellectual, cultural, and
existential questions. As both Louise
Jonasson and Svavar Gestsson note in their
remarks, these works have emerged from
the artist’s commitment to her practice.
They are not attempts to illustrate her eth-
nicity, and the fact that imagery referring
to her part-Icelandic heritage appears in
them is the unintended consequence of cre-
ative processes directed elsewhere. Yet that
imagery is undeniably present, for the first
time rising from her imagination and into
the oil-based pigments, the canvas, paper,
and wood with which she has worked over
the last fifteen years.
Taken together, the works in Island
Souvenir suggest how a person might imag-
ine their sense of location through history
and culture. As personal rather than politi-