Mixed-media installation on two floors 17.01 - 10.02.2019
The exhibition was held in collaboration with Cycle Music and Art Festival (Guðný Guðmundsdóttir art director, Sara Öldudóttir researcher and Jonatan Habib Engqvist curator) and curated by Jonatan Habib Engqvist. New music piece was composed by artist Joseph Marzolla and scholar Ann-Sofie Gremaud held a seminar in connection to the exhibition together with the artist and art director Guðný Guðmundsdóttir.
Installation view
‘All is Full of Love’ investigates the role of colonial relations in identity formation and their conditional effects through recent, past and current predicaments. Connecting the three most important industries in Icelandic modern times: fish, tourism and art Hulda Rós Gudnadóttir positions herself as the evolving figure of the- artist-as-puffn while underlining the manual labour that prevails, in spite of shifting class structures. - Jonatan Habib Engqvist
Installation view
The Danish scholar Ann-Sofe Gremaud has claimed that Iceland could be perceived as a crypto-colonyi as a means of understanding an underlying condition of Icelandic society: The centuries of Danish rule and a widespread negligence of its actual consequences - including the continuation of power structures that have favoured the few over the many - have had a lasting impact on Icelandic society. Additionally, the fxation on “norientalist” stereotypes can be viewed as a process of European-colonial reciprocal identity formation. As Hegel has explained, identity processes rely heavily on mutual confrmation: The centre needs to defne a periphery (an “other”) in order to defne itself. Iceland has certainly played a vital role as “the other place”, where explosive natural power has been juxtaposed to the long history of European culture. Historical colonial association with the natural state has for instance led to Icelanders being perceived as more original, authentic, unspoiled or even uncivilised and barbaric. Reactions to that perception have sometimes included its rejection, whilst at others, embraced it and so been complicit in self-exoticisation.
Installation view
All is Full of Love surveys contemporary manifestations of crypto-colonial patterns by focusing on the obvious, massive growth of the tourist industry on the one hand, and the less visible but imperative fsh industry on the other. These manifestations become a means of discussing gentrifcation processes currently taking place in Iceland utilising a triangulation between fsh, tourism and art. At the same time, they are tightly linked to developments on a global scale due to the expansion and reach of capitalism and the neo-liberalisation of the the principles of the welfare state. In this way, it is both the story of ‘an other’ and relatable to the wider context of socio-political and ecological unrest in the world today. - Jonatan Habib Engqvist