Née en 1972 à Reykjavik (Islands), vit et travaille en Islande.
Aujourd’hui, après des années consacrées à la photographie et aux courts-métrages – vidéo, Bjargey Olafsdottir s’est tournée vers le dessin et la préparation d’un long-métrage, tout en continuant la création musicale.
Nous présenterons une sélection de ses dessins pince-sans-rire et impitoyables au Salon du Dessin contemporain (10 -14 avril 08)
et ensuite à la galerie, avec Elsa Cha et Naoko Majima.
et ensuite à la galerie, avec Elsa Cha et Naoko Majima.
Bjargey Olafsdottir is one of a new generation of Icelandic artists who are working across lens-based media and performance.
In her series of photographs, Bedlam (hallandi stafir) (2001). Bjargey Olafsdottir makes portraits of her friends as the lie among the rumpled detritus of their bedrooms. They are like broken dolls scattered among the ruins of domesticity, abandoned in the delirium of sleep. In this small country with its young population and its burgeoning art scene, there is a feeling of endless possibilities. Artists gather and photograph each other; groups form and projects develop heedless, for a while at least, of the outside world. There are no « natural wonders » in their work, no steaming pools or outlandish rocks, for this is an urban and sophisticated arena, the international society of the young and well-educated, who treat life as a comedy or a fantasy, an absurdist collection of people and events. If it is Bedlam (hallandi stafir), then it is a kinder place than the term would suggest with its connotation of insanity and havoc. Yet for all this, there is a sense of the sinister in Olafsdottir´s work. The decaying teeth in the young woman´s dentistry manuals are ugly and speak of the degradation of the flesh, the inevitability of infection and disease. The sleeping people in Bedlam (hallandi stafir)(2001) could just as well be victims of some terrible crime, and the chaos which surrounds them might be the work of some wilful and destructive burglar rather then the carelessness of youth. There are questions posed in all of these works, about our preconceptions about what we see, about the mediums of film and photography, narrators of the real yet consummate creators of fiction. In her series of photogaphs, and in her films, Bjargey Olafsdottir writes peculiar narratives, contstructs strange performances and bizarre plots. As her audience, we are complicit in her aesthetic exercise; we read the signs, know the symbols and navigate the plot. (Val Williams)
