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Review by Kremena Nikolova-Fontaine, photos courtesy of Hulda Hákon and the Akureyri Art Museum.

If you don't know who Hulda Hákon is, you should. Because her works are simply like no other. Her relief pieces are a blend of modern illustration and the timelessness of sculpture. They are a social commentary comparable to daily newspaper strips, but have the vividness of an animation still-frame. Once you see them, they get stuck in your mind.

I met the artist in person over a cup of coffee at the legendary Reykjavík café Grái Kötturinn ("The Gray Cat") on Hverfisgata 16a, which I learn she is also the owner of. The walls are permanently decorated with some of her works.

We discussed her participation in two different events from the 2009 Reykjavík Arts Festival: her solo exhibition “MEETING (TWO MEN ONE WOMEN AND A MONSTER FROM THE SEA),” which recently opened in the Akureyri Art Museum and the piece "294.989" from the event “ART&LOVE&ART” in the Nordic House in Reykjavík.

"Since I was a kid, I have always been fascinated with wall reliefs. I grew up looking at the base reliefs by the sculptor Einar Jónsson," Hákon explains. She uses the material hydrocal, which is of the same origin as plaster, only much stronger, similar to cement. It dries fast and later she paints upon it with acrylic.

"I love the process of painting it, to emphasize the drama of the surface and to sculpt the illusion of space with light." While she finds that her early works were quite dark, her more recent works often have a lighter foggy background which enhances the sense of distance.

Hákon’s art is about contemporary Icelandic life, but she’s not political. Her works could be described as an emotional record of our collective psyche. The citizens of her realm seem to spring from the same fishing village, be it President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, former Prime Minister Davíd Oddsson, beloved singers-songwriters Andrea Gylfadóttir and Ragnhildur Gísladóttir.

The artist finds inspiration in unlikely sources, "from psychology books to manuals for Icelandic farmers," she explains. To my great surprise, Hákon confesses, "I am not so interested in fiction." The people in her work might be surrounded by sea monsters and fabulous creatures, but it’s not an escapist's fantasy, rather a keen observation of reality using metaphors.

Hákon disagrees when I describe her rendering of human figures "naivistic." There is a flair of innocence in her work, which reminds me of medieval manuscripts. To this comparison she does not object. Her men and women, dressed in suits with perfect hair-cuts are quite down-to-earth folks. Some of the series she has done previously are about artificial polite behavior or people standing in a row with a few of them facing backwards.

Some of the brilliant inscriptions in her works say, "There must be somebody doing something," or "To be invisible: Stand aside, look in the other direction." These short poetic sentences add grains of absurdity to the already surreal situation of the folks in suits.

Hákon turns around and points at a wall relief of a flock of ravens as a sample of her inspirations. This piece derives from the term "flight of ideas" in psychology, when an insane person rants endlessly, jumping from one unrelated subject to the next, triggered by random words.

Ravens are cherished in Norse mythology as friends of mankind, while in Catholicism they are a symbol of death. Ravens tend to hold large gatherings and it was believed that there were two ravens on every farm in Iceland.

Our conversation drifts to Hákon’s fascination with the Sami people as the first settlers of the Scandinavian countries. She tells me that she is a member of the Icelandic-Sami friendship society.

I am curious about which comes first in Hákon’s art creation, the imagery or the texts. “Fifty-fifty,” she replies, explaining that instead of doing elaborate sketches, she writes her concepts in words and then makes rough sketches in a fast manner.

Hákon emphasizes that the exhibition “MEETING (TWO MEN ONE WOMEN AND A MONSTER FROM THE SEA)” in Akureyri, which runs through July 5th, is not a retrospective show. Most of the works on display are in her own possession, while many of her larger works, which she considers key pieces of her career, are not available.

But it is interesting that her very first artwork, made in 1982, a portrait of an Icelandic sheep, is part of this exhibition. The piece which made Hákon feel proud and confident calling herself an artist for the first time. "Before that I didn't really like anything of what I did," she recalls.

The artist has brought with her a passport-sized booklet of her works which she published with her husband, Jón Óskar, who is also an artist. Apart from bass reliefs and paintings, she has done installations as "Inventory" in Gallery Bananananas in 2006 which was dedicated to one of Iceland’s most famous painters, Jóhannes S. Kjarval.

Hákon is particularly proud of the landscape sculpture "Tree Fires" from 1995 in Vefsn, Norway. She draws a map of northern Norway and describes the uniqueness of the project “Artscape Nordland” when she made the sculpture, and how an enormous area was turned into a giant art park with each municipality having its own sculpture symbol.

"294.989"

If foreigners ask how Icelanders are holding up during the kreppa (“economic crisis”), I recommend seeing Hákon’s ambitious work "294.989," which is the number of the Icelandic population as of the 1st of January 2009. A depiction of 294,989 individual faces form the face of the whole nation.

The gigantic work is made of 20 or 21 pieces (Hákon takes out a calculator to be precise); each plate has the size of 120x120x10 cm. Although the event “ART&LOVE&ART” has already taken place, four of the plates from "294.989" can be found in different locations around the country.

"Doing this work is therapeutical," Hákon explains. "We all have to do something to deal with the crisis." She uses the Icelandic phrase "ad safna vopnum sínum” (literally, "to collect one’s weapons," which means "to pull oneself together").

"And I do what I do best. If I am able to do such a big piece, then anybody could do something big in their field." She ends the conversation on an optimistic note, asking, "How do you eat an elephant? You start from the leg and gradually you complete the job".

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“MEETING (TWO MEN ONE WOMEN AND A MONSTER FROM THE SEA)” runs through July 5th. The Akureyri Art Museum is open daily between 12 noon and 5 pm, except Mondays. Admission is free.

The work "294.989" is no longer on display in the Nordic House, but parts of it are on display in four different locations: the Akureyri Art Museum, the Nordic House and the Gray Cat café in Reykjavík, and in the dispaly window of the local newspaper Fréttir in the Westman Islands.

Click here to read more about Hulda Hákon and the 2009 Reykjavík Arts Festival.

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KNF – kremenan@gmail.com  

Kremena Nikolova-Fontaine works at home for the elderly and is a passionate collector of art books, dedicating every spare moment to learn more about art while dreaming about having an exhibition of her own. She studied graphic design at the School of Visual Arts in Akureyri from 1999 to 2002. In college she realized that she didn’t want to be a designer or commercial artist but rather an illustrator and writer. At the moment she’s experimenting with her first graphic novel.

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