Research photo from Reykjavik harbour. Photo: Hulda Rós Gudnadóttir
“In another way these works [ WERK, 2021)] represent Guðnadóttir’s further abstraction of the global economy, and Iceland’s place in it, in times of profound change and paradigm shifts. The artist’s initial exploration of dockwork has resulted in a connected chain of interrelated but kaleidoscopically different artworks spanning time, each body of work connecting to the last but always departing from a divergent perspective. Each iteration has moved away from investigation and further toward art object or image—in essence, a conceptual manifestation of an image of an image of an image.”
Research photo from Bildudalur, Iceland. Photo: Hulda Rós Gudnadóttir
Keep Frozen is an art-practice-as-research project with several artistic outcomes that positioned itself outside of academia. Starting as early as in 2010 with a very personal gut feeling and urge for researching childhood memories of the aesthetics of living on the harbour, on the docks and by the sea, the project later developed into having a more broader focus on harbour aesthetics in general and more specifically the heart of those aesthetics: dock labour, movements and materiality.
In her work Gudnadottir builds on her knowledge of qualitative methodology of anthropology in a practice that researches through making and showing of art works. Her projects are often large in scale and rest on the shoulders of many – an interdisciplinary collaboration under a leadership of a artist / director / producer / author / initiator. It was through the Keep Frozen research process that Gudnadottir´s method of accessessing a subject matter from several different artistic mediums and methods was developed.
Research photograph from Essaouira, Morocco. Photo: Hulda Rós Gudnadóttir
The Keep Frozen research reached variety of locations along the Atlantic Ocean; to the isolated West fjords of Iceland; to New York City; to North-Africa and to Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland; to a forgotten unloading port; to ancient trade center; to abandoned beaches; mid amongst the dock workers and to a village of 166 inhabitants.
During the research there were important experimentation and reflections in the studio in Berlin but even more importantly research conducted through series of public exhibitions, events and publications and the dialogue with the audience that came as a result of that public outreach.
Sculpture from Keep Frozen part one @ De-Construkt, NY. Photo: Hulda Rós Gudnadóttir
Video still from Keep Frozen part one installation video @ De-Construkt, NY. Photo: Hulda Rós Gudnadóttir
By using various artistic mediums Gudnadóttir attempts to unfold the plurality of meanings embedded in a subject matter and at the same time the interrelations between different mediums. This approach also applies to showing. The artistic outcomes are shown as series of room sized installations where the constellation of individual art works evolves, expands and contracts between each iteration. Sometimes they are shown as individual pieces in group exhibition or, as in case of single-channel video and filmic works, screened in a museum black box or a cinema. Gudnadottir has especially developed a method of warping from one artistic medium to the next (documentary to performance to multi channel video to installation to photography for example).
The early research process up to early 2015 is described in The Story, a collaborative text between the artist and German curator Berit Schuck, that was printed in the the publication Keep Frozen: Art-practice-as-research. The artist´s view, a collection of articles and images edited by the artists herself. Up to then public parts of the research project had been Keep Frozen part zero, a single channel video work, Keep Frozen part one, a mixed media installation event in Red-Hook, NYC, that also premiered the Buoy sculpture for the first time, and Keep Frozen part two, also a mixed media exhibition at Reykjavik Art Festival, where the video work Material Puffin and C-print series Artist as a Worker were shown for the first time as an installation.
The book publication was launched at Pro qm in Berlin at the 2015 Berlin Art Week and the following year Keep Frozen Projects became the highpoint of the research project. With symposiums and practical showing of artistic research of other artists both in Leipzig and Reykjavik the approach to the issue of the artist´s view of art practice as research was broadened up to become a discussion that included all artists and artists works.
It also included premier of major Keep Frozen art works such as the 48-hour dock worker performance and Labor Move, a mixed-media video installation at Kunstkraftwerk, Leipzig and , Keep Frozen part four a mixed-media installation at ASI art museum in Iceland that showed the Golden Ship sculpture, the Shipyard Paintings and a found Ghostnet sculpture for the first time.
In April 2016 the feature length documentary Keep Frozen premiered in the 'Regard Neuf' competition category at Visions du Réel in Switzerland. The film was later nominated to dozens of prices where it was shown all over the world in contemporary art and cinema contexts. In 2018 the film was shown as a solo exhibition in the 12 x12 program of Berlinische Galerie in Berlin.
Major Keep Frozen exhibitions in the last years include the solo exhibitions All is Full of Love at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in 2019 and WERK – Labor Move at Reykjavik Art Museum in 2021. In the mixed-media installation on two floors at Künstlerhaus Bethanien the Artist as a Puffin works that predate the Keep Frozen research were given a context within the Keep Frozen research project. A new Puffin work was developed as The Puffin Shop currently in the collection of the Living Art Museum in Reykjavik, Iceland. Another new work premiered in the installation was Thinking like a Mountain. Thinking like a Mall.
Works from the Keep Frozen series was also shown as installations at group exhibition Swimming Pool – Troubled Waters curated by Valerie Schulte Fischedick in 2021 and the Great Patch curated by Weronika Ptak at UFO gallery in Krakow, Poland in 2022.
Audience performance. Keep Frozen part one @ De-Construkt, NY. Photo: Hulda Rós Gudnadóttir
“Keep Frozen began as a journey into the unknown. When I started working on this project, I did not know that it would become an ongoing research project about different harbour cities along the Atlantic coast, visual art as a medium and its relation to our society. Neither did I know I would begin the research in Bíldudalur, a small fishing village in the Westfjords of Iceland, and Reykjavík, and that I would later extend it to include Essaouira, an old harbour city on the West Coast of Morocco, and Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York City. Initially, I simply had the intuition that I should spend some time in an Icelandic fishing village in order to explore my idea of such a place and compare my childhood memories with the current situation. But why Iceland? What made me want to visit a fishing village? And why at this moment in my life?
CLOSE-UP ON A SHOP WINDOW THAT MIRRORS THE ARTIST’S FACE. SOMEWHERE IN BERLIN-MITTE. GREYISH LIGHT. STREET NOISE MIXES WITH THE SOUND OF THE COLD WINTER RAIN.
On April Fools’ Day 2009, I moved to Berlin. I was a thirtysomething artist from Iceland who had completed her studies in anthropol- ogy, design and visual art, travelled the world and lived in many different cities. ”