In 2000, Anna Eyjólfsdóttir, president of the Reykjavik Sculptors’ Association, invited me to cover a couple of sculpture exhibitions celebrating Reykjavik as the European Capital of Culture. In the following years, this city of 120,000 witnessed a remarkable building boom. But times change, and Iceland soon fell victim to 2008’s devastating economic bust, its crisis covered extensively in the international news. These events are key subjects in Eyjólfsdóttir’s work, revealing an underside to the “idyllic Iceland” experienced by visitors, like me, who come for its natural beauty or its contemporary art and return home with magical memories. Over the past 20 years, Eyjólfsdóttir has had solo exhibitions in small museums, art centers, and private art galleries in Iceland, Finland, and Denmark. She has also participated in group exhibitions and given performances in the Czech Republic, Germany, Greenland, Lithuania, Spain, and Sweden, and she presented at the Art on Armitage window gallery in Chicago. Eyjólfsdóttir studied fine art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in Germany and earlier at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts in Reykjavík. Born and raised in Iceland’s capital, she continues to live there today. …see the entire article in the print version of June’s Sculpture magazine.
