LJÓS [mynd] LIST
Artist Talk
October 17 th | 17h
Gallerí Grótta
The year 2025 marks the twentieth anniversary of Hulda Rós Guðnadóttir’s artistic career. Her journey began at The Living Art Museum (Nýló) in 2005, and to mark the occasion she opens a solo exhibition at Gallerí Grótta.
The choice of location is no coincidence: the library and its surroundings are deeply interwoven with the artist’s formative years in Seltjarnarnes, where she grew up by the sea and immersed herself in its rhythms. The exhibition begins at the intersection of personal roots and artistic inquiry.
At its core, the exhibition emphasizes photography as both an autonomous art form and a tool for research. Two photographic series by Guðnadóttir are brought into dialogue: WERK (2021), digital pigment prints of boxes labeled “KEEP FROZEN AT -20°C OR BELOW; FRESH FROZEN AT SEA,” printed on fine art paper and originally developed from her installation at Reykjavík Art Museum in 2021—where photography became the final stage of an extensive research and performance project; and S-I-L-I-C-A, also fine art pigment prints, taken during fieldwork as spontaneous snapshots while the artist explored the global production network of silicon — a raw material fundamental to contemporary technology.
By juxtaposing these two approaches, the exhibition reveals different modes of knowledge-making and documentation: on the one hand, the carefully composed photograph; on the other, the raw and immediate proximity of the moment.
In WERK, photography becomes both medium and method, transforming installation and performance into autonomous artworks. Each image is meticulously composed — space, light, and perspective are orchestrated to create new visual outcomes that stand independently from the original installation. Photography here acts as a framing device, reinterpreting the work across time and space.
In contrast, S-I-L-I-C-A captures the immediacy of the field with a spontaneous approach, in tune with the artist’s research into the global silicon supply chain. These images focus less on formal composition and more on observation — seizing transient details and unexpected conditions that shape the research process.
Together, WERK and S-I-L-I-C-A highlight the dual role of photography in contemporary art: it can both construct, interpret, and reimagine the artwork while simultaneously documenting, preserving, and tracing the process of making. Photography thus becomes a bridge between creation and research, between the finished work and the traces of its conceptual origin — underscoring the inseparable role of labor, materiality, and experimentation in artistic production.
Guðnadóttir’s photographs do not merely depict materials or events; they transform circumstances, time, and process into visual form. They reflect her working method situated at the intersection of performance, installation, and documentation — continuously “casting” her works across mediums. Photography becomes the connective tissue between experience, recording, and interpretation.
The exhibition at Gallerí Grótta also provides an opportunity to situate the artist’s work within the broader context of photography in Icelandic contemporary art and to reflect on how her research-driven approach has shaped her distinctive international position.
With this solo exhibition, new light is cast on Guðnadóttir’s practice, reinforcing her standing as an artist who works both in and through the visual, social, and material dimensions of research-based art.
Becky Forsythe, curator