CONSCIOUS THREADS
Ýrúrarí, Alda Mohr Eyðunardóttir and Ragnhild Hjalmarsdóttir Højgaard
September 23 —January 28 2024
How can we work more sustainably – including in our aesthetic practices? In recent years, that question has become an inescapable part of everyday life for artists and designers, and the issue will only become even more pressing in the years ahead. In this exhibition we present three artists who all, each in their own way, respond to the reality of living in a time where human consumption is in need of rethinking, where we must learn to love old clothes and use local resources.
Icelandic Ýr Jóhannsdóttir creates art under the pseudonym Ýrúrarí. Her projects are suffused by a playful air of everyday activism and feminism: you don’t need to throw away grandma’s old woollen sweater just because you’ve spilled ketchup on it: instead, take the opportunity to turn the sweater into a living hot dog with everything. Ýrúrarí's practice brims with generosity, and she is only too happy to share her experiences at workshops.
Alda Mohr Eyðunardóttir and Ragnhild Hjalmarsdóttir Højgaard both come from the Faroe Islands and share an interest in Faroese wool. ‘Wool is the Faroese gold,’ goes an old proverb. Since the advent of globalisation, however, large quantities of the island’s wool have gone to waste. Today, artists and designers are at the forefront of fresh efforts to find new ways of fully utilising all that gold.
Ragnhild Hjalmarsdóttir Højgaard revitalises the use of Faroese wool in her own processing of the material as well as in her exploration of crafts and techniques from times gone by. In her works, the wool moves away from the individual body to the shared, common space of architecture. The themes addressed here are about sustainability, about utilising local natural resources, and about rediscovering a keener sensibility towards materials and craftsmanship.
Alda Mohr Eyðunardóttir evokes memories of the Faroese landscape in her delicate fence, its posts made of sugar and ship’s biscuits, all sticky and broken-up like childhood memories. Her Binditættir (knitting tufts/knitting poems) dangle on the fence like loose tufts of wool. The Faroese word táttur can mean many things: a tuft of hair, wool or grass, part of a song or poem, or a rope of the kind used when exploring bird cliffs or fishing.
The common thread of the exhibition is that art and design can point us in new directions in our current era of material overconsumption. This holds true right from the intimate and philosophical level, where wool is the common denominator, to the imaginative explorations of clothing. We hope that the exhibition and its conscious threads will give you joy – and cause for reflection.
