The Icelandic Canadian - 01.03.2003, Qupperneq 27

Vol. 57 #4
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
163
ativity and imagination to make the events
that envelop us coherent. Jonasson recog-
nizes that life in modernity is fraught with
journeys and departures, and that we strug-
gle to make sense of codes and symbols,
places and relationships with which we are
only partially familiar. Our understandings
are always incomplete, and possible mean-
ings are sutured together just like the
stitches the artist uses to mend a painting’s
surface, or to hold together the linen of
Banner with Lance. We can experience this
incompleteness as a perpetual sense of loss
or displacement in the world or, as these
paintings so poignantly suggest, we can
learn to accept it as the substance, the ten-
der beauty of our lives.
Acknowledgements
I wish to express my warmest thanks to
Louise Jonasson for many things, not least
the invitation to write about her work.
Graham Asmundsson deserves credit for
his considerable labours to co-ordinate all
aspects of this exhibition. My thinking and
writing about Louise’s art have benefited
front conversations with the artist, as well
as with Kristine Hansen, Gudrun Agusts-
dottir, Svavar Gestsson, Astradur
Eysteinsson, Vidar Hreinsson, and Robert
McKaskell.
- The essay was written for and pub-
lished in the catalogue for the show entitled
"Minningar um ey/Island souvenir" that
was at Kjarvalssta>ir, Reykjavik 27 August
to 9 September 2001.
End notes
1. Vidar Hreinsson (2001) “Folly in
Tailcoat, or Multiculturalism.” Kistan
(www.kistan.is). “Islendingadags ra;da”
(“Icelandic Day Speech”) translated by
Vidar Hreinsson. Originally published in
Heimskringla August 14, 1902, as Kanada.
Islendingadagsminni, flutt a Islendin-
gadagshatidinni / Red Deer nylendunni /
Alberta, 2. agust 1902.
2. John Berger (1984) And Our Faces,
My Heart, Brief as Photos. New York:
Vintage International.
3. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
(1999) Philosophy in the Flesh. New York:
Basic Books, p.3.
4. Astradur Eysteinsson (1997) Icelandic
Resettlements. Symploke 5(1-2): 153-166,
p.153.
5. John Berger, And Our Faces, p.14.
6. John Berger (1985) The Sense of Sight.
New York: Vintage International, p.208.
7. Susan Stewart (1993) On Longing:
Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic,
the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham and
London: Duke University, p. 135.
8. John Berger, And Our Faces, p.78.
9. Nadia Seremetakis (1994) The Senses
Still: Perception and Memory as Material
Culture in Modernity. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, p.4.
10. ibid.
11. John Berger, And Our Faces, p.9.
12. Kristjana Gunnars (1992) The
Substance of Forgetting. Red Deer, AB:
Red Deer College Press, p. 125.
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