The exhibition spaces of Hafnarborg are built around a stately house that has stood at Strandgata 34 since 1921, originally a home and pharmacy. The museum’s main gallery still bears witness to this history, with the curved outer wall of the old house standing as a distinctive marker within the space. One of the exhibition’s central works plays with the same idea – a low partition stretches across the room, following the contours of the hall while carving out a new space within it – a void, a stage, a potential arena.
Other works are also created especially for the exhibition: sculptures, images and works on paper that introduce a subtle narrative, drawing on the qualities of the space; its materials and light, its possibilities and limitations. The works weave together the building’s historical and imagined timelines, exploring questions of originals and copies, tracking doubles and considering both sides of the coin.
Una Björg Magnúsdóttir’s (b. 1990) work explore questions of beauty, value, human existence, behaviour and conduct, employing texture and value-laden materials with subtlety and precision. Her compositions, seemingly simple and unassuming, belie a nuanced complexity. Through the manipulation of unremarkable objects, she provokes reflection on the boundary between the authentic and the artificial, challenging conventional frameworks of meaning and perception.
Una Björg studied fine art at the Iceland University of the Arts and completed postgraduate studies at ÉCAL in Switzerland, graduating in 2018. She lives and works in Reykjavík. Her works have been shown at the Reykjavík Art Museum, ASÍ Art Museum, Gerðarsafn, Y Gallery, Ásmundarsalur, KEIV in Athens and Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. She was nominated as Artist of the Year at the Icelandic Art Prize 2025 and received the Guðmunda Award from Guðmunda Kristinsdóttir’s Arts Fund in 2024.