ArtReview sent a questionnaire to artists and curators exhibiting in and curating the various national pavilions of the 2024 Venice Biennale, the responses to which will be published daily in the leadup to and during the Venice Biennale, which runs from 20 April to 24 November.
Hildigunnur Birgisdóttir is representing Iceland; the pavilion is in the Arsenale.
ArtReview What do you think of when you think of Venice?
Hildigunnur Birgisdóttir Children with backpacks commuting via the vaporetto to get to school on a cold November morning. People doing catwalks in the rain, the tiniest functional shopping trollies in the world. The specific panic of missing your airport boat when realising that your dot on Google map is in a dead end. Losing your sense of time, then self and then literally getting lost and finally feeling like a champion after finding your way again.
AR What can you tell us about your exhibition plans for Venice?
HB I plan to make an exhibition, a quite traditional one in some sense but also questioning that tradition. It will require visitors to spend some time on it, which might be a bit optimistic in a huge international event such as this. Objects teased from the systems of commerce will be presented in a sort of offbeat harmony, there won’t be much happening on the floor but I will have a window with a canal view and a few surprises, which I hope will charm the crowd!
AR Why is the Venice Biennale still important, if at all? And what is the importance of showing there? Is it about visibility, inclusion, acknowledgment?
HB If one still believes that art can move people, Venice offers a place to see so many new perspectives in one place and time. Having a collection of carefully selected shows from all over can offer you a view into these different art scenes. The more variety the better, we will all be the wiser for it.
I also think we all felt it last Biennale, after years of scrolling art on the internet, how impactful it is to be in the same space as the works. Experiencing The Milk of Dreams by Cecilia Alemani was life altering. I am already so stoked to see what Adriano Pedrosa and his team will have to offer with Foreigners Everywhere.
Taking part in an event like this is an honour and an opportunity to connect with peers all over the world.
AR When you make artworks do you have a specific audience in mind?
HB I exhibit because I feel the need to share my findings on beauty and truth.
AR Do you think there is such a thing as national art? Or is all art universal? Is there something that defines your nation’s artistic traditions? And what is misunderstood or forgotten about your nation’s art history?
HB I believe nations are a human construct; I also know we have a global consensus that they exist. So, a person is born somewhere at some time and that will surely have an effect on how they pursue their art. Thus, one might say that our places definitely colour our art making but that colour can be seen and understood from different places and perspectives. The contemporary art scene in Iceland is fairly young, it could be described as quite poetic and conceptual. Coming from an island with such spectacular nature one might not think that our art would be this concept driven?
AR If someone were to visit your nation, what three things would you recommend they see or read in order to understand it better?
HB The thermal swimming pools: the ones with slides and energetic kids in minus degrees and smaller ones with no slides where the wise old folks meet at the break of dawn. The Kringlan shopping mall will give you the consumer side of the nation.
My favourite book is by a fellow artist, the late Mr. Birgir Andrésson. It’s a book he wrote about his good friend Helgi from Grund who was a farmer from the East, who lost His eyesight as an adult. They lived together in a home for the blind in Reykjavík when Birgir was a boy. Here is a passage from that book that changed how I viewed my art:
“My parents were out one day when I got back from school, I went to see Helgi, who was in his kitchen. He stood by the cooker stirring some white gunge in a casserole.
– Are you hungry?
Yes, I was hungry.
After finishing what was in the casserole, I asked what it was I’d been eating.
– That was sliced sausages, the crust of a cake, a bit of water and some ice cream. It is by me.”
AR Which other artists have influenced or inspired you?
HB I am a very impressionable person, every thing and person is a source of inspiration for me. I admire artists that seem to thrive outside of the so called art-scene. I understood at a very young age that art might be a place for me as I grew up, mainly because I saw the ability to never fully grow-up within the arts. The piece once around the sun by one of the great Icelandic conceptual godfathers Kristján Guðmundsson changed my perception of the world and what art can do for a person. I also remember seeing a Miró show as a young child which made me (a child!) feel relevant, it really rocked my world. (it’s important to feel seen/relevant is the moral of this story).
For this exhibition That’s A Very Large Number – A Commerzbau, I was inspired by German dada artist Kurt Schwitters. I remember sitting in class, listening to my devoted art history teacher Sigridur Candi. Sat in a high chair, with her trusted slide-viewer humming beside her, she gleefully told us how Kurt Schwitters’ ‘Merz’ and Merz-Bau’ actually came from a newspaper clipping, from the world ‘commerz. Now 25 years later, I realise that I have re-introduced the com to the merz in the bau – the commerzabau.
AR What, other than your own work, are you looking forward to seeing while you are in Venice?
HB I am super excited to get to know my neighbours in Arsenale for example: Eimear Walshe who is representing Ireland, and my next door neighbour from Latvia, Amanda Ziemele. There are way too many artists I’m excited about to name them all. But I can’t wait to see the works by Yuko Mohri, Koo Jeong-a, Trevor Yeung, Inuuteq Storch and being a sculpture buff of course Kapwani Kiwanga. The two projects I am most pleased are being realised during the Biennale are Anchor in the Landscape by the collective Artists and Allies of Hebron and Foreigners in their Homeland presented by the Palestine museum US.
I am looking forward to coming back in September to really experience the whole thing like a guest. And like I mentioned before, can’t wait to see what Adriano Pedrosa is cooking up.
The 60th Venice Biennale, 20 April – 24 November
