Steinunn Gunnlaugsdóttir Iceland, b. 1983
Steinunn Gunnlaugsdóttir (b. 1983, Iceland) is a multidisciplinary visual artist whose work moves fluidly between sculpture, video, performance, and installation. Her practice centers on the internal conflicts and emotional landscapes of the “humanimal”—a hybrid condition that reflects both our primal instincts and our constructed identities. Through poetic, visceral, and often unsettling forms, she explores how individuals confront, negotiate, or surrender to the invisible systems and structures that shape human experience.
Gunnlaugsdóttir received her BFA from the Iceland University of the Arts in Reykjavík in 2008, and in 2013–2014 she participated in the Home Workspace Program at Ashkal Alwan in Beirut, Lebanon—a formative period that deepened the conceptual and political undercurrents of her work. Her artistic language is rooted in corporeality and material sensitivity, frequently drawing on bodily presence, raw textures, and symbolic transformations to evoke existential vulnerability and resistance.
Over the past decade, Gunnlaugsdóttir has developed a distinctive voice in contemporary Icelandic art. In 2018, she was nominated as “Artist of the Year” in Iceland, and in 2021 she was awarded the Richard Serra Award, honoring her outstanding contribution to the field of sculpture. Her works have been shown in solo and group exhibitions across Iceland and internationally, and she continues to push the boundaries of sculptural and time-based media through humorous, personal yet universally resonant inquiries.
