Wednesday May 27th at 8 p.m., Austrian artist Ingrid Gaier will welcome guests for a presentation of her video work STITCHES, developed during her residency at Hafnarborg. The event will include a musical contribution by flautist and composer Björg Brjánsdóttir.

Gaier’s work explores female biographies, memory and the traces of lived experience through textiles, drawing, photography and animation. In STITCHES, she reflects on the story of an embroidered altar cloth connected to Þorbjörg Eyjólfsdóttir, an Icelandic woman who, according to oral history, was abducted during the Barbary Corsair raid in 1627 and later returned to Iceland, where she fulfilled a promise she had made during her captivity by donating the cloth to the church at Holt. The altar cloth is now part of the collection of Skógar Museum, where it forms part of the permanent exhibition.

Presented in connection with the artist’s residency at Hafnarborg, the event introduces Gaier’s research into the altar cloth, tracing a lesser-known thread within this chapter of Icelandic history. Drawing on textile history, oral accounts and the cloth’s visual language, STITCHES uses animation to bring attention to the altar cloth’s significance as both a personal and historical object. In this way, the presentation opens onto broader questions of material memory, textile practice and the stories carried by handwork.

Ingrid Gaier (b. 1967) lives and works in Vienna. Her practice spans drawing, textiles, animation, writing, archival research and intermedia projects. She is head of the textile design department at the Fashion Institute Vienna.

Free entry – everyone welcome.