Welcome to the website of Viktoría Gudnadóttir
 
‘A Day in the Life’ by Viktoría Gudnadóttir Holding up a mirror up to people and creating situations that challenge your comfort zone is one of the central concepts in my art. My work responds and reacts to the world around us: media representations of violence, minority groups in society, and the ugliness and beauty that can be found in the smallest things. In my work, I also articulate my political views, and don’t shy away from showing my identity whether it be my national, feminist or sexual identity. In exploring these themes, I work across a variety of media: video, painting and photography, which gives me greater freedom in expressing my ideas. Video is a medium I have often used to observe my immediate surroundings and tell a story. In “Pride”, (2002), I videoed people watching other people. Crowds – what could be an entire community – line the pavement, watching another minority group walk past in a parade. In other video works (Walking on, 2002, Trying, 2003, Curiosity, 2006), I created a narrative by staging a scene, using myself, or actors, as the personae. Similar to Eija-Liisa Ahtila, who uses video as a story-telling medium, my video pieces are on an intimate scale, exploring what could be personal experience and psychological drama. Where her works are lengthier and more technically complex, I have chosen a more pared-down approach to narrative: one camera, simple editing, and a condensed story. My paintings are also a way of telling a story. Like my video works, older paintings contained more personal content. However, I recently started using a different kind of story based on newspaper images and accounts of violence and war. I give this ‘found material’ a personal slant, integrating it into my own story by numbering the paintings according to which day of my life the newspapers were published - “Day 13.490” and “Day 13.855”, and so on. I have long used photography to observe details around me: stones, water, grass and trees, the beauty of an old, worn-out tractor. Again, these elements have a personal significance for me, and to my childhood growing up on a farm, in Iceland, where I was born. I regularly revisit my childhood home, taking my camera with me to record it all - from the highest mountains to a single blade of grass. My series “Hands On” (which has parallels with “You are the Weather”, by Roni Horn a frequent visitor to Iceland) shows a single hand in various positions, in an expression of multiple facets of my identity. My work has been exhibited widely. Recent venues include the Olympic One Minutes exhibition in China, the Out video festival in Russia, and exhibitions in Holland, Belgium, Germany and Iceland. A series of work was recently acquired by the collection of the City of Hengelo.