“I’ve used wool for several years because while I was out East, I noticed that a lot of wool was simply being thrown out. I started then to think about how I could use it in my work and this is one result.” So explained Icelandic artist Ráðhilður Ingadóttir in a recent interview with RÚV about “Ultimate, Relative,” her new exhibition at Hafnarborg, The Hafnarfjörður Center of Culture and Fine Art.
The large-scale installation includes raw wool hangings, onto which Ráðhildur projects filmed excerpts of her own diary. “The wool is just washed and hung up and with the projection on it, you get a kind of three-dimensional feeling,” she says. “The goal isn’t the handiwork in the video, but rather, the fragments of memory here and there. These aren’t videos that you come and stand in front of and watch from beginning to end.” In fact, she explained, the videos are continually going in and out of focus as they are projected on the wool.
In addition to the wool and video installation, the exhibition features a side gallery with work drawn from Ráðhildur’s dreams. “I have worked with my own dreams in my work for many years, but these are pieces that I dreamed had been made by specific artists. For instance, there are pieces by Ingólfur Arnarson, Sólveig Aðalsteinsdóttir, and Franz Graf, but there is also a piece that a friend of mine in Copenhagen dreamed I had made. I simply asked him to make the piece himself. He’s not an artist, but he nevertheless painted the piece.”
“Ultimate, Relative” will be on show at Hafnarborg until March 18th.
