Saturday October 2nd at 2 p.m., we welcome guests to a talk about the exhibition Community of Sentient Beings, with artists Kathy Clark and Nermine El Ansari, alongside Wiola Ujazdowska, co-curator of the exhibition with Hubert Gromny. There, they will shed light on their own works, as well as discussing the context that the works have entered into, within the exhibition. Ólöf Bjarnadóttir, on behalf of the museum, will oversee the talk and offer interpretation of discussions for those who wish, as the talk will mostly be in English.
At the exhibition, we get the chance to look at our connection to the world in new light, as a community of sentient beings. This then allows us to open various paths of investigation, whether it be the relationship between human and nature, human and culture, or human and human. The term sentient being thus allows us to abandon historically charged definitions, to think of personhood and humans more broadly. At the core of the concept, is an interrogation of the historical and social usage of a category of human, which concerns whom and what we consider part of a community.
Kathy Clark is an artist and curator living and working in Reykjavík since 2005. Her sculptures and mixed media installations involve fantasy and storytelling that are deep in symbolism while connecting to an invisible world and the inner and outer landscapes in which they take place. She has exhibited her work, at various art venues, such as the Reykjavík Art Museum and the Reykjavík Arts Festival, in addition to exhibitions in her former home in California. Her work has been collected in various cities in America and Iceland. In addition, Kathy has curated exhibitions at Wind and Weather Window Gallery in Reykjavík since 2012, exhibiting local artists through site-specific installations viewed from the street.
Nermine El Ansari lives and works as a visual artist in Reykjavík. In 1998 she received her painting diploma from the School of Fine Arts in Versailles. In 2002, she graduated from École nationale superieure des beaux arts (ENSBA) of Paris in multimedia. In 2002, she also studied at the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in Havana. Her work has been presented in various exhibitions in Egypt, France, Lebanon, Germany, Taiwan, Cuba and other countries. Over the last ten years, she has focused on cities, borders, territories and mapping, both real and imagined, exploring the binaries provoked by the urban landscape.
Wiola Ujazdowska is an artist, performer and art researcher based in Reykjavík, Iceland. She holds an MA in art theory from Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland, where she also studied painting at the department of fine arts. In the years 2012-2013, she studied at CICS in Cologne, Germany. Ujazdowska’s work mostly focuses on body and gender in the context of politics, migration movements, class, borders and beliefs, as well as dealing with social and cultural constructions in philosophical, cultural and anthropological context.
We would also like to inform guests about a series of performances, taking place on Saturdays throughout the exhibition period, at which time artist Rúnar Örn Jóhönnu Marinósson will be present in the lower gallery of Hafnarborg. There, he presents these live events in connection with his work at the exhibition. The performance will start at approximately the same time as the talk, being ongoing that afternoon, so guests can catch a glimpse of live performance art, after the talk is over.
Everyone welcome – free entry.