Saturday March 7th at 3 p.m., we invite you to the opening of the exhibitions Some Honest Persons, by Weronika Balcerak and Lukas Bury, and Echo, by Ragna Fróða.
The exhibition looks at the long, often overlooked history connecting Poland and Iceland – one that began with trade long before Poles became the largest immigrant population in Iceland. By working with embroidery, video and painting and by combining archival materials with contemporary reflections, artists Weronika Balcerak and Lukas Bury revisit this unexpected cultural overlap. The exhibition highlights how everyday objects, labour and economic entanglements have influenced Iceland and Poland for nearly a century, revealing a relationship that began long before EU migration – and that continues to shape both countries today.
Curated by Aldís Arnardóttir and Hólmar Hólm.
Lukas Bury (b. 1991) and Weronika Balcerak (b. 1996) form the Reykjavík-based artist duo Austur-Íslendingar. The name reworks Vestur-Íslendingar, a historical term used for Icelanders who emigrated to America, and reflects questions of arrival, displacement and belonging. Their practice includes installation, textiles, image-based research and site-responsive work. They develop their projects through sustained processes of making and contextual inquiry, bringing together personal experience with historical reference. Their work is characterised by a careful use of materials and a clear spatial language, as they focus on how meaning is formed through presence, repetition and shared space.
In the exhibition, Ragna Fróða invites us into an alluring world of patterns, colours, forms and textures. Her visual language is at once familiar and foreign, nostalgic and new. The starting point for the works in the exhibition is a series of ink drawings created in a state of flow, in direct dialogue between the subconscious and the hand. Through a multi-layered process, the uninhibited line of the drawing is transformed into digitally embroidered works that exist on the threshold between the abstract and the figurative. Ragna’s work centres on the creative process itself – the interplay of colour, texture and the narratives embedded in the patterns and symbols of textiles. By combining traditional craftsmanship with contemporary technology, Ragna seeks to expand the boundaries of craft, textile design and visual art.
Curated by Ingunn Fjóla Ingþórsdóttir.
Ragna Fróða (b. 1970) is an Icelandic artist, curator and educator. Ragna studied fashion and textile design in Paris in 1992-1995 and later attended the textile department of the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts in 1996-1998. She has worked extensively abroad and, over the past fifteen years, has lived alternately in New York, Berlin and Reykjavík, engaging in a wide range of projects related to art and design. For many years, she served as Head of the Textile Department at the Reykjavík School of Visual Arts and as Chair of the Icelandic Textile Association. In recent years, she has been based in New York, where she runs her own studio alongside her role as Executive Director of Edelkoort Inc. and New York Textile Month. She has received numerous grants in recognition of her work and contributions to art and culture. Her work has been exhibited in Iceland, across Europe and in the United States.
Free entry – see you at Hafnarborg.
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