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About Us
About Us
Ósk, Sigrún, and Garðar
began collaborating in summer 2020, in the middle of a pandemic. Their motive
was the window that had opened in the wake of the pandemic: Assumptions had been
shattered; the world was upside-down. Unprecedented times meant a pressing need
to gauge the situation and seize the opportunity that this window offered. The idea
struck a chord: Artists, designers, and architects agreed on the need for a critical,
creative venue. The South Iceland Biennale became the foundation for an
artistic movement aimed at examining our relationship to the rest of the world
and our future.
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Garðar Eyjólfsson is a designer and an
associate professor at the Design Department at Iceland University of the Arts,
he was the program director of the Product Design programme there from 2012 to
2017 and chaired the MA Design programme from 2017 to 2020. Garðar also teaches
at various European art academies. As a researcher, curator, event director,
workshop leader, and specialist for institutions and businesses, Garðar has
sought to maintain a good balance between academic and personal projects. He is
active in design research and leads the research group Mitigation and
Adaption. Along with biennial curators Sigrún Birgisdóttir and Ósk
Vilhjálmsdóttir, Garðar will direct the speaker programme and event management
and organize certain expeditions and workshops.
Ósk Vilhjálmsdóttir works in diverse
media, as her work demands: painting, video, sculpture, photography, book
works, and text. She is interested in visible and invisible boundaries, including
those dividing internal / external, private / public, human being / natural
world, child / adult. Over the last twenty years she has produced a series of
works in collaboration with teenagers. Adolescents teeter on the line where
adult ideas blend with childhood. Ósk is founder and director of the Wanderlust
highland-tours company and, in collaboration with artist Margrét H. Blöndal, established
the Nature School for children and teens. Ósk has organized and joined in
myriad actions to protect Iceland’s central highlands. From 2003 to 2006 she
organized treks north of the glacier Vatnajökull, in areas that now have vanished
underneath the power-station lagoon Hálslón. Ósk has shown her work in
museums and galleries in Iceland and abroad and enjoyed artist residencies
around the world. She took part in the work of the Living Art Museum and
chaired its board from 2000 to 2002.
Sigrún Birgisdóttir is Professor in Architecture at Iceland University of the Arts. In 2007 she became Director of architectural studies at the Iceland University of the Arts. From 2012 to 2019 she served as Dean of the Department of Design and Architecture at IUA. Previously she worked with Pierre d´Avoine Architects, Cherie Yeo Architecture and Design and Pip Horne Studio in London together with being a Senior Lecturer in Spatial Design at New Bucks University. From 2015 to 2019 she advised on education and policy-development in the promotion of creative fields in Israel for the CLEVER project. In 2008 she co-founded Vatnavinir (Friends of Water) to develop comprehensive spatial strategies for wellness tourism in Iceland based on sustainable use of natural resources. She is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Iceland engaging in the critical examination of territorial change and the wider urban transformation processes of rural areas at times of increased tourism in Iceland.