SÍM Residency: Where Gatorade flows like the water
Text by: Karina Hanney Marrero
Samband Íslenskra Myndlistarmanna (The Association of Icelandic Artists) or SÍM as it is referred to on a daily basis, was founded on the 13th of November, 1982. The member-based association was established as an unionised alliance between different artist organisations at the time. Driven by the ever present institutional devaluation of artistry as a profession, artists took matters into their own hands, ensuing a statute that equally outlined and protected artists rights as professionals within the institutional framework. Since its foundation, SÍM has provided a professional soundboard for artists and art related discourse, arranging studios, exhibition platforms, and establishing an international gateway fro artists to and from the country. Lastly, SÍM has created an artist residency program which will be the focus of this article. The residency was founded by Ingibjörg Gunnlaugsdóttir, the current operation manager at SÍM. Running for 21 years, the SÍM Residency that began as a small one-bedroom apartment and studio which hosted artists in downtown Reykjavik, now includes two more locations, Seljavegur and Korpúlfsstaðir, welcoming over hundred artists from all over the world on an annual basis.
These two residency locations offer a range of opportunities for artists. Since 1996, SÍM has had access to Korpúlfsstaðir and in 2006 the Center of Visual Art was established, a collaboration between SÍM, the Reykjavík city-council, Form, the association of design at the time and the Institute of Industrial Technology. Korpúlfsstaðir is located in the greater Reykjavík area, offering artists a more intimate and nature infused working environment. Today, Korpúlfsstaðir, with the café and in situ event and exhibition venue Höfuðloftið, are solely run by SÍM, providing studios, accommodation, as well as a textile workshop, ceramic workshop and an artist-run gallery for SÍM members and guest artists alike. The Seljavegur complex was established in 2006 and hosts local and visiting artists, providing a vibrant setting for research, work and play. Located in downtown Reykjavík, just a short walk from the capital's hustle and bustle; museums, galleries, cafés, Universities and of course the luring local nightlife.
In conversation with Martynas Petreikis, the current project manager of the residency program, he explains how he first visited Iceland via the residency program in 2013 during a three month stay. Now a resident of Iceland for ten years, Petreikis points out that it’s common that artists either revisit the SÍM Residency multiple times or simply take the leap and move to Iceland. Along with the networking benefits presented by the program, for both local and visiting artists, it’s worth mentioning that returning artists have also found a course of study at the local Universities. In this sense, the residency can be viewed as a hub for creative practices and a place for establishing networks among artists. The residency is self-directed and project-based, meaning that artists have creative freedom to tend to the development and progression of their creations regardless of their affinity to Iceland. Although it is worth mentioning that the country's qualities are often influential, both directly and indirectly.
As project manager for four years and counting, Petreikis’ tasks involve continually updating the online platforms of the SÍM Residency program, virtually mapping the exhibition space at Korpúlfsstaðir, and managing a wide variety of in-house matters. After a long hiatus, Petreikis successfully applied for the Nordic Council’s Nordic-Baltic Mobility Programme grant in the field of culture on behalf of the residency program. The program had successfully applied for this mobility grant on several occasions, last time in 2015, as a means to establish a connection between these two regions. At that time the board selected three applications to partake in the residency throughout the year. The grant in 2022 further enabled a total of seven artists to join the self funded SÍM residency program in Korpúlfsstaðir for the duration of a month. The successful applicants of 2022-23 were Ingrid Bjørnaali, Laura Dahlberg, Tomas Daukša, Auksė Miliukaitė, Inari Sandell, Rūta Spelskytė and Suvi Tuominen. The overarching theme was sustainability, as nominated by the Nordic Council, ergo the silver lining of the exhibited work was established.
The group's practice, although individually developed, was presented during a month-long group exhibition entitled www/melt/pool. This time-frame allotted for the installation was unique in and of itself, enabling the group to develop and reassess their work individually and collectively. The catalogue describes how „www decodes into work work work, together with melt and pool, revealing the experiences of the artists. A month of expeditions, talks, visits, games, specimen collection and research pooled into constellations of local spheres and fictional terrains.“ In addition to the creative pooling and day to day development, the visiting artists attended an artist talk with the 2021 Icelandic Art Award recipients, collaborators and life companions, Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir and Mark Wilson, along with artist and head of the Department of Fine Art at the University of Arts, Bjarki Bragason. Patreikis emphasises that the link to the Icelandic educational and professional arts sector is of a great importance, whether it’s touching base with the University faculty, connecting with museum directors, curators or gallery directors, adding that the institutional sector presents an area of possible collaboration that he would like to see more of in the SÍM Residency.
The project presentation www/melt/pool took place in the loft of the barn, Hlöðuloft, at Korpúlfsstaðir. The space itself is raw with concrete walls, floors and individual columns, and wooden beams in the ceiling. The one night event has been given an afterlife through the virtual mapping of the space which is accessible online, enhancing the circulation of the month-long program and the artwork presented. The residency’s homepage is of great value in this context, where information about the artist's past, present and future can be found in addition to further information about the project presentation. The theme of sustainability, was certainly evident amongst the artworks present, with a recurring fascination with the vivid colour of glacial blue, mentions of folklore, iron oxide, lava, and the hyper reality of social media, to mention a few. It is always interesting to view your home country through the eyes of visitors and how the artists incorporated the elements of our remote island in the middle of the North Atlantic sea.
Suvi Tuominen installation greets guests as soon as they enter the virtual exhibition space. „Fabrics of life“ depicts a parody of being present, namely the struggle to maintain connection to reality while creating an online presence. The installation is video and performance based, interactive and intentionally quite fragmented. Playing out the artist's presence and live collection of visual data in its near surroundings, Tuominen questions the authenticity presented on social media within travelling and tourism. The strained forced smile she wore was especially impactful, creating a feeling of unease and emitting a sense of desperation as is so often the case among tourists who storm the Icelandic ring road in a week's time, only to upload photos of it to social media.
Ingrid Bjørnaali created a CGI replica of the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier entitled „Sinking daycaves and sliding babygrounds“. Like Tuominen, Bjørnaali reflects on the digital image and the overlap of virtual reality and real life. Bjørnaalis' digital imagery and small scale printed copies equally comment on the ethical notion of mapping, from a colonial perspective. Her work addresses the lived experience of change and the human need to document it, even retreating glaciers. The glitches in the imagery are a gentle reminder of the conceptual and technological shortcomings of mapping and its inherent political implication.
Inari Sandells video essay „The Glacier is Powerade blue“ is based on new earth appearing, in this case hot lava in Geldingardalir in Reykjanes. The projected video tones the idealisation of nature as well as questioning its validity. The proverb „don't build a house on sand“ comes to mind as the video's narrator highlights the risk of claiming land that is still arising. The video and slowly melting installation comments on the in turn relationship between nature and humans, systemic breakage, development of ecosystems and how eventually nature will outlive us all.
Although not related, the installations of Laura Dahlberg and Tomas Daukša carried a great conversation. Situated across from each other, Dahlbergs „Bodies of liquid“ took the shape of strands of seaweed and was conceptually rooted in folklore. The silicone sculptures of seaweed in colours of purple and turquoise, had a strong connection to creatures from folklore and could be activated by the viewer through air pumping syringes. There is a playfulness to her work which relates well to Daukšas pools of flowing Gatorade. The cartoon-like seaweed figures and the pools of streaming Gatorade could have emerged from the same mythological world. In conversation, Daukša explains how he is occupied with happiness and recycling culture that although wildly different concepts have a lot in common. While casting the shell-like silicone and the Gatorade lava pools he thought about the creation of Earth and the belief of the mythical World Turtle. Both installations remind the viewer that imagination is always near.
Auksė Miliukaitė's installation invites you into a sensory world, combining found objects, personal items, essential oils, and sculptures of frozen water and caramelised sugar. It consists of sheets hanging from the ceiling and a pillar offering sweet treats, creating an intimate experience, almost as if visiting Miliukaitės dreamlike home or bedroom. This sense of intimacy was countered by the melting pink ice sculptures and soaked, dwindling flowers both of which contributed to an almost eerie impression. The ephemeral qualities of the installation were especially interesting within the group presentation, with a focus on the more delicate and fleeting perception of reality.
Rūta Spelskytės cabinet of curiosites, although not confined to a singular cabinet, were installed on a weathered concrete wall. She approached the instalment in an animistic way, combining found material with personal objects that are woven together intrinsically through her area of research: magnetoreception, the sense which allows an organism to detect the Earth's magnetic field. Naturally gravitating towards the Icelandic black sand, Spelskytė extracts the iron oxide from the sand particles, lending found material a curious shape and mobility through magnetic force hidden away in her pocket as she walks through the installation.
The works presented gave a great insight into the residential program and the value that is cultivated individually and collectively for the duration of the artists stay. An exchange of artistic propagation between Iceland and the Baltic countries leaves the Icelandic art scene a bit richer than before and in times of transnational acceleration, a creative hub like the SÍM Residency only restores a feeling of temporal belonging. For two decades, SÍM has provided a professional soundboard for artists and art related discourse, arranging studios, exhibition platforms, and establishing an international gateway for artists, both locally and abroad. Evidently the SÍM Residency program is an invaluable part in the advancement of the Icelandic art scene.
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INARI SANDELL
Inari Sandell is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Helsinki. Their lens-based and sculptural work takes form as installations, addressing themes of coping, rest and sensory experience entangled with post-digital and post-human millennial existence. Often inspired by mundane objects, Sandell’s work combines photography and moving image with delicate textile and sharp and heavy materials like glass and metal.
I capture specific biotopes via various camera technologies and softwares, and proceed to work with these bits and pieces of nature based on their virtual outcome. I am interested in various processes of learning from- and interpreting our surroundings and the species we co-exist with, through a scientific and technological approach to image-making, inquiring into the way they alter our scopic regimes. My works explore the omnipresence of the digital in our experience of the world as well as the inability of technology to adequately articulate matter’s complexity.
Ingrid Bjørnaali
SUVI
TUOMINEN
I am a performance artist, dancer and archaeologist. My sense of aesthetics rises from playful bodily inquiry, theoretical rigor and messy poetics. In my artistic works I construct complex understandings of reality aiming toward the subconscious. During my residency time in SÍM I will research social image flows, tourism and heritage-making in Iceland as a performance with possibly fatal effects.
(Photographer: Hrafnkell Birgisson)
Ruta Spelskyte / drifter, storyteller
I am interested in the poetics of human magnetoreception as a sense that could be trained and regained. My research mingles geological, neurological, and biological approaches to its main component - magnetite. I use it to construct sensory devices and structures for future humans and contemplate worlds of sci-fi and extro sci-fi.
My previous work dealt largely with alive organisms in the hope to find the balance between usage and appreciation, imagining intra-active relationships, scenarios of learning from non-human and future alchemy.
Rūta Spelskytė
Laura Dahlberg
Laura Dahlberg is an artist who works with installation and sculpture. Her main interest is to find ways to co-existence with machines, matter and other species in our shared environment. Dahlberg’s practice often focuses on immersive and interactive situations, which are based on the sense of absurdness and various sensory experiences. She is interested in creating these situations for example with experimental sculpture materials, interactive electronics, motors, sensors, sounds and smells.
Dahlberg earned her BA in fine arts from the Saimaa University of Applied Sciences, including exchange studies at the St Lucas School of Arts in Belgium and earned her MA from sculpture department at The University of the Arts Helsinki. She has had exhibitions in both Finland and Belgium. She lives and works in Helsinki.
Aukse Miliukaite studied at the UAL, graduated BA and MA painting in Vilnius Academy of Arts. In her latest works, artist creates experiential painting installations, activating different senses for the exhibitor. Aukse perceives creativity as a medium between senses and natural processes. As a result, she usually uses painting that connects the experience of human and nature (through plants, liquids, weather, geological processes, change of matter). Using not only vision, but also other senses, she explores possibilities of painting to convey information. By transforming information, artist explores identity and her perception of the reality. During this residency artist will continue her research and work on water, fluids and ice.
Auksė Miliukaitė
Tomas Daukša
My work explores the relationship between naive happiness and recycling culture. With influences as diverse as Derrida and L Ron Hubbard, new tensions are crafted from both simple and complex textures. Ever since I was a pre-adolescent I have been fascinated by the essential unreality of the moment. What starts out as vision soon becomes morphed into a cacophony of senseless exploration, leaving only a feeling of decadence and the prospect of a new synthesis. As spatial replicas become transformed through emergent and diverse practice, the viewer is left with a testament to the limits of our imagination.