Visitations

Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir and Mark Wilson are a collaborative art partnership. Their interdisciplinary art practice is research-based and socially-engaged, exploring issues of history, culture and environment in relation to both humans and non-human species. Often working in close consultation with experts and amateurs in the field, their work tests cultural constructs and tropes, and human behavior in respect to ecologies, extinction, conservation and the environment.

Visitations is an exhibition based on their work, in the collaborative research project Visitations: Polar Bears Out of Place, undertaken with experts from the University of Iceland in visual art, folklore, animal and environmental studies. The aim of the project is to contribute to a growing body of knowledge concerning human/non-human relations in a time of global warming. To this end particular focus is on historic and contemporary representations of polar bear arrivals to Iceland.

This practice-based artistic research project has unequivocal value for the development of research culture in the arts in Iceland and marks a turning point for the University of the Arts. It further entails an interdisciplinary collaboration between Iceland University of the Arts and the University of Iceland, introducing an innovative approach to research collaboration in times that call for a revision of conventional methodologies and a new approach to knowledge production. The project is funded by the Icelandic Research Fund and hosted at the Iceland University of the Arts, where Snæbjörnsdóttir holds a professorship and the role of Programme Director in graduate studies within the Department of Fine Art. The exhibition is organised in collaboration with the Anchorage Museum in Alaska.

Further information on Visitations: Polar Bears out of Place 

Curator: Æsa Sigurjónsdóttir, assicoate professor at the University of Iceland.