HULDA RÓS GUÐNADÓTTIR

The installation consisted of the 3-channel video work Labor Move (2016), 5.000 identical and appropriated frozen fish cardboard boxes, the bronze cast multiple Hooked (2019) and a new video work Labor Love (2021) that was shown in the exhibition shop in the museum foyer.

From the exhibition text by curator Birta Gudjonsdottir:

In her solo exhibition at Reykjavík Art Museum - Hafnarhús, Hulda Rós Gudnadóttir focuses on social issues in a site-specific installation. The installation WERK - Labor Move is made especially for the museum’s main hall as the building Hafnarhús was originally built as a warehouse on the quay. The work consists of a three-channel filmic work, Labor Move; sculptures, directly related to the filmic work; and a video recording of the assembling of the sculptures in the building in the run-up to the exhibition opening. The exhibition is based on an examination of the functioning of the multi-layered global economy, and the perspective of the familiar, the local, is used to analyse and project a connection with the global.

The three-channel filmic work Labor Move is the centre point of the installation… In the work, as well as in the installation, parallels in the manual labor which went one in this building before are examined in the context of the gentrification process of the port area and similar development around the world. Hafnarhúsið is the first building by Reykjavík Harbour to be given a new role as a building for art and cultural activities and has become characteristic of the area, similar to the development of harbour areas everywhere.

In the filmic work, we see several dockworkers performing specifically for the camera, based on movements they have become accustomed to over a long period of time while unloading boxes of frozen fish from within the hull of the first trawler and over to the quayside at Reykjavík Harbour. The same movements are repeated, they throw heavy boxes from one place to another with considerable coordination and skill. Labor Move is an art work in itself, but also a documentation in film and sound about the 48-hour performance of the dockers in front of viewers in the exhibition space in Leipzig in 2016. The 48-hour duration of the performance is the same time as the dockworkers usually have to unload the fish from a freezer trawler.

The film is the result of Gudnadóttir’s collaboration with the dockworkers which lasted for several years. Until recently, these same workers worked on the quayside, near Hafnarhús, and also appeared in her filmic work Keep Frozen…

Media in Icelandic

Ólöf Gerður Sigfúsdóttir at National Broadcasting Service

Bergsteinn Sigurðsson at National Broadcasting Service