The Art Council of Hafnarborg has selected high tide – low tide as the autumn exhibition of the year 2022, from the proposals that were submitted at the end of last year, but the winning proposal was submitted by Sigrún Alba Sigurðardóttir. The focus of this year‘s exhibition will be on the seaboard, which is grand in scale, as well as being home to little lifeforms, delicate flora and diverse rock formations. There, the large and fierce clashes with the small and fragile, as the waves crash relentlessly on the shore.
At the exhibition, the seaboard will be viewed through the work of artists from different countries, whose culture and economy are greatly shaped by the seaboard and the ocean. Throughout history, those that live near the coast have in large part based their livelihood on the proximity to the ocean, where the shoreline marks a clear border, in addition to being a bridge to other worlds. The seaboard can thus play a part in elucidating the complex positions and responsibilities mankind has towards nature in the Anthropocene.
In relation to climate change, one might view the seaboard as a conflict zone. Rising sea levels have an immediate effect on the seaboard – life at the coast will change as global temperatures continue to rise and this may even force humans to resettle in new places en masse. The exhibition will then call attention to the tenuous yet precious relationship we have with nature, in the hope of moving viewers and causing visitors to rethink their own position towards the seaboard in a whole new light.
The participating artists will be announced at a later date.
Sigrún Alba Sigurðardóttir is an independent curator, having previously curated exhibitions at the National Gallery of Iceland, the LÁ Art Museum, the Reykjavík Museum of Photography and the National Museum of Iceland. She is currently working on an exhibition based on collaboration between Fotografisk Center, Denmark, Landskrona Foto, Sweden, Northern Photographic Center, Finland, and the Akureyri Art Museum, Iceland. This exhibition is set to open in Copenhagen in January 2022. Sigrún Alba is a teacher of art history at the University of Iceland, as well as teaching at the design department of the Iceland University of the Arts. She has published seven books and a number of academic papers, on Icelandic art and photography in particular.
This will be the twelfth exhibition in Hafnarborg’s Autumn Exhibition Series, where the objective is to create an open platform for the arts, taking various viewpoints and subjects into consideration. It is the Art Council of Hafnarborg, along with the Director, that reviews submissions and selects the winning proposal each year.