Today we’d like to introduce you to Asgerdur Arnardottir.
Hi Asgerdur, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
My name is Ása and I’m a multidisciplinary visual artist born and raised in Reykjavík, Iceland. I hold a bachelor’s degree in Art from Iceland University of the Arts and I am currently graduating from the MFA art program at California Institute of the Arts, or CalArts. I moved to LA a little under two years ago, right at the time I was starting my studies at CalArts. I had longed to come to this school for years, so arriving here felt like a moment that was always supposed to happen.
I work within a broad range of mediums spanning plaster sculptures, digital works, sound, poetry, fashion, video, welding, singing, dancing, performance, photography and work in the intersections between them all. I always had a hard time separating these mediums and aimed at bringing them together in an efficient and new way and for that reason, I sought studying at CalArts due to the school’s emphasis on interdisciplinary practices and cross-department collaborations. At CalArts, students are encouraged to explore classes from other departments outside their own. I have taken classes in the theater department, music, animation, dance and the costume design departments. Witnessing and participating in all these cross-department collaborations that are happening within this school has enhanced my interest in working in an immersive environment even more. I see no hierarchy between mediums, I only see how material and the mind speak to each other. For me, it is all about the approach, the intention, the care I put into my work rather than focusing on the medium/material and the world/context that material typically would sit in. I like to challenge categorization and how we think about things. Making a sculpture that reminds of a painting, sound as object, clothes as sculptures, sculpture as clothing, using words as abstract entities… These are all ways for me to test the boundaries of each medium and hopefully create a new meaning. I also like to create objects/sculptures that hold contradicting things at the same time: I make works that evoke simultaneously comfort and discomfort, seriousness and humour, soft and hard materials.
What happens when we shift our mindset? Change our intention? In my opinion, the mind will inevitably affect the materiality of things that are being worked on – materials (the external) and the mind (internal) have an effect on each other and that relationship between the internal and the external sparks the interest for the creation of my works. For me, there’s always some energy and movement in things, even in entities that look static and stale. And challenging the way these mediums are usually perceived is one of my main goals.
Coming here was not an easy decision but a decision I felt like I had to make, so I pushed myself hard to come here. It was a burning feeling coming from within and it was almost like I came here by this inside force – I couldn’t explain with words. Having been here for almost two years, I have slowly realized why I am here: It’s the focus on an immersive and interdisciplinary approach to art and breaking boundaries.
Since I was little, I’ve been interested in arts but never really saw it as something more than just a hobby for me. I remember loving fashion and drawing but was conditioned to think of them as separate worlds. It was not until I was 19 years old that I felt this uncontrollable force within me to pursue an art career and take it seriously. The funniest thing is this decision of mine did not feel like it was formulated slowly with time, but rather that it did happen in one day. It was a summer evening in Reykjavik City in 2013. I had just come back home from exchange studies abroad, where I stayed for a year. Moving abroad for one year made me look deep within my body and my mind shifted because when you take your body to a new environment then all of a sudden, you see yourself more clearly. It was around evening time at my parent’s home and I sat down with a paper and pen. I hadn’t drawn since I was a kid probably but always knew I liked it, I wanted to change that “like” to “passion.” That evening I drew nonstop for almost 4 hours and then went straight out to see my friends. When I came back later that evening and re-visited the drawing I told myself out loud “Yes this is what I should do next” and since then I have not second-guessed this decision of mine. It was then where I realized how much power the mind has. I remember thinking I had to be really determined and intentional for it to happen, starting with my mind – I could not just sit around and wait for good things to happen to me. It was almost like I had enough and some kind of anger due to past suppressed desires of mine exploded within one day. In a good way. That’s why I think a lot about the mind and body when it comes to making my art – What you think affects your surroundings, including your artwork.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I think being an artist, or a person even, is rarely a smooth road. If it was a smooth road, art works would probably not have that spark that they sometimes can contain. The magic of it, for me, comes from this battle between unlearning, failing, struggling to finalize, “perfecting”, synchronizing – then back to the unlearning, failing… a back-and-forth process where I use those back and forth wheels to keep moving only forward. The everyday awareness I hold of the risk this life path could be I have to tell myself to keep choosing and I think of the word choice as a fluid one, when I allow for constant change, choices need to be reformulated and they will change their meaning. The word “choice” remains an everyday focus point for me. It is easy to fall into hopelessness and at the end of the day, it all comes down to intention and constant choices and having the ability to make them. It’s all about accepting the fluidity, unpredictability and movement of life – And trying to keep some form of control within all that chaos. I feel it is really important to be aware of how context and time change the meaning of things and I try to work with life like a dance almost.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I focus on more than one medium. My art practice focuses on world-building, site-specific installations and the body in space where key concepts are poetics, multiplicity and transcending the limits of written language in a dialogue with visual language. My focus is on the digital versus the physical and I don’t necessarily see them as separate, rather as components I constantly seek to explore so they can work together effectively and positively. I’m interested in challenging the idea of creating movement within a static image using written language in correspondence to visual, auditory, and tactile languages. How far can we stretch a language? What is a language? I emphasize that playing with different senses and perspectives can be delivered as a form of language and ways we gather information. We learn, communicate and understand things through a process of going back and forth and that circular movement I use as a strategy for my art-making. I see materiality as language, I see colour as language and I even see smell as language.
By intertwining different bodies of works within a physical space, I am certainly playing with the concept of world-building. Now what does world-building mean to me? It means everything around us really; it means creating new systems within systems; it means creating coherency between objects/fragments that appear dissimilar; it means creating balance; it means finding togetherness; it means being open to the idea that nothing around is separate from each other, it means intention, it means creating meaning, it means welcoming new perspectives. World-building does not mean to me to create a world that’s fictional and outside/disconnected from our current world because I see everything as part of reality, whether it is fiction or not. Fiction and reality are not so separate to me.
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
I see myself working in various creative settings and environments and connecting with people in all kinds of fields of study because that’s how I get my ideas and learn: I’m interested in different perspectives on things. I see my main practice being working in the intersections of fashion and art and creating new perspectives on clothing and the idea of styling/style. My next steps are about exploring the limits of clothes and art and seeing how they can meet and create something even more powerful together.
Pricing:
- Digital print on fabric $2,000
- Floor sculpture $3,400
- Digital print $2,000
- Digital print $1,800
- Digital print on fabric $1,800
Contact Info:
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/asgerdurarnar
- Other: www.instagram.com/asa__arnar
Image Credits
1. Photo cred: Zoey Moon 2. Photo cred: Zoey Moon 3. Photo cred: Zoey Moon 4. Photo cred: Zoey Moon 5. Photo cred: Nick Lee
