Hildur Bjarnadóttir

symbiotic relationship

Silk, plant dye, acrylic paint, 2016

During the last few years Bjarnadóttir has worked on an extensive project which has its material and conceptual roots in a piece of land she acquired in 2013 in Flóahreppur, in the south of Iceland. The land functions as a platform for contemplating issues of belonging and ecological disruption. The plants on this piece of land are the source of colours for silks which create areas and situations within the spaces of the Former Faculty of Biology of the University of Latvia. For Bjarnadóttir, colour is a material which carries information about the place, people and animals that belong to it, and the social and ecological system that surrounds it. The plants act as recording devices; they collect information through the soil and the air, as well as their roots, petals, flowers and leaves. This information is passed on in the colours Bjarnadóttir extracts from the plants and which she has used to make the works for SURVIVAL KIT 9. 

Artist's bio

Artist Hildur Bjarnadóttir (b. 1969, Iceland) currently lives and works in Reykjavík and Flóahreppur, Iceland. She graduated from the textile department of The Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts in 1992 and finished her MFA degree at the New Forms department of the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, in 1997. Bjarnadóttir works with painting, weaving, plants, belonging and ecological disruption. Her work materialises in the form of installations comprised of woven paintings and dyed silk. She currently holds the position of associate professor at the Iceland Academy of Art.