Erla S. Haraldsdóttir

Erla S. Haraldsdóttir is an artist working with painting, drawing, printmaking, and site-specific installations. She investigates the boundaries between memory, heritage, and shared mythologies. Central to her work are the transformative properties of painterly color and qualities of light, and the relationship between materiality, narrative, and the site of exhibition. She often develops works in response to the context in which they are shown; she prefers to think of her paintings as works that correspond to their exhibition spaces rather than as mere images on a wall. Her works, which often explore aspects of our shared humanity and varieties of cultural expression, are always in dialogue with the exhibition space and its public.

Methodology is fundamental to her practice; process leads the work, which is built with generative rules, sites, art historical references, or narratives. She has applied this multifaceted approach in both teaching and collaboration.

Her books include Difficulty of Freedom / Freedom of Difficulty (2014), Make a Painting of Trees Growing in a Forest (2015), Patterns of the Family (2019), Övergångar (2021), and My Mother’s Dream(2022).

Haraldsdóttir has exhibited widely, including at the Reykjavík Art Museum, the Akureyri Art Museum, LÁ Art Museum, Moderna Museet, Kalmar Konstmuseum, Berlinische Galerie, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, and the Momentum Biennial in Norway. Her work is held in the collections of Nanning Museum (China), the National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavík Art Museum, Akureyri Art Museum, the ASÍ Art Museum, Statens konstråd (Public Art Agency Sweden), and Moderna Museet. Residencies include Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin), Kjarvalsstofa Cité des Arts(Paris), Bag Factory (Johannesburg), and Ateliers’89 (Aruba).

Recent exhibitions: Imagine Visionary Animals (2025, Origins Centre, Wits University), Encountering 8000 Miles (2025, Nanning Museum, China); Tæri (2024, Neskirkja, Reykjavík); My Mother’s Dream (2024, LÁ Art Museum); The Seventh Day (2023, Ambassador’s Residence, Berlin); Reflections (2023, Turbine Art Fair, Johannesburg); Caleidoscope / Kviksjá(Reykjavík Art Museum, 2023–24); My Mother’s Dream, (2023, Gallery Guðmundsdóttir, Berlin).

Forthcoming: Transit (2026, Gallery Guðmundsdóttir, Berlin); The Hunt of the Unicorn (2026, SIND Gallery, Reykjavík).

Haraldsdóttir earned an MFA from Valand Academy, Gothenburg, in 1998, following studies at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm, and the San Francisco Art Institute. She was born in Reykjavík and works between Berlin and Johannesburg.