The Icelandic Art Center´s office is closed for summer holidays until the 4th of August.

The twelfth edition of the Sequences Biennial, Sequences XII: Pause, will take place from 10 to 20 October 2025 in Reykjavík.

This year, the festival brings together a wide-ranging group of Icelandic and international artists whose work explores slowness in both artistic practice and audience experience.

Curated by Daría Sól Andrews, Sequences XII invites visitors to step away from the rush of daily life and immerse themselves in ten days of exhibitions, performances, lectures, guided walks, and more. The festival is an open invitation to pause, reflect, and experience art at a different rhythm, making space for attention, meditation, and sustained engagement.

“This iteration of Sequences will provide an invitation to slow ourselves. Everything about our current existence urges us forward. "Pause" offers space for reflection, attention, and a reorientation of pace , inviting us to resist the pressure to accelerate and instead settle into a different rhythm. As we slow the brakes, look at what we can find: the dedication of an attentive practice, the meditative healing of works that call to our hands and tactile senses; the sensory immersion of works that demand our full, quiet, attention. Exhibitions will focus on artistic practices that engage duration, repetition, listening, and intimacy —making space for the quiet power of sustained attention,” says curator Daría Sól Andrews.

Three main exhibitions anchor the programme, each offering a unique perspective on time: Experiential Time, focusing on time-based, experiential works and installations that invite us to experience slowly, and encourage quiet contemplation; Political Time, exploring art that considers the lived experience and politics of time, especially as it relates to marginalized communities and histories; and Natural Time, presenting works that reveal the tempo of non-human life, from microscopic growth to geological change, and invite us to see time on a scale far beyond our own. Audiences can also look forward to performances, artist talks, and screenings throughout Reykjavík and the surrounding landscape, with opportunities to slow down, listen, and connect. Mark your calendars for 10–20 October 2025 and join us for Sequences XII: Pause, a celebration of contemporary art, reflection, and shared experience in Iceland.

The full list of participating artists and the detailed programme will be announced later this year.

The visual artist Sæmundur Þór Helgason has been selected from a pool of applicants for a residency at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York in the summer of 2026. The residency spans three months and is funded by the Icelandic Visual Arts Council.

Photos from the opening of the travel exhibition “Outside Looking In, Inside Looking Out,” in Tokyo, Japan on May 30, 2025.

Exploring visual art is both enjoyable and enriching, and this summer offers a wealth of exhibitions nationwide. 

In preparation for the Autumn 2025 allocation of the Visual Arts Fund, the Icelandic Art Center offers several forms of support for applicants.

The Icelandic Visual Arts Fund has opened its call for applications for the autumn 2025 allocation round. The application deadline is Monday, August 18 at 4:00 PM (GMT).

Tokyo Arts and Space (TOKAS) is pleased to announce the open call for creators participating in TOKAS Residency Programs 2026. The deadline for application is on Wednesday, 25th June 2025, 6:00 PM (JST).

A Visit to Tristan Elísabet Birta´s Studio

For our second installment in our series of studio visits we went to meet with Tristan Elísabet Birta in their cozy subterranean studio. Tristan is a 33-year-old visual and performance artist. They also make music under the artist name AfterpartyAngel. While their artistic work tackles complex and multifaceted topics such as identity, gender, and femininity, it is always infused with a sense of playfulness and a touch of the fantastical. We had a conversation with Tristan about life, their creative path and artistic vision.

The article “to revel in the seemingly endless völundarhús”: On Opera in Icelandic Contemporary Art by Adam Buffington was first published in the magazine Art in Iceland, no. 05, in 2025. In recent years, concepts associated with opera have become increasingly prevalent within Icelandic contemporary visual art. Opera’s inherently interdisciplinary nature is one likely reason for the increased interest in opera amongst visually based artists, with the foundations of opera’s conceptual and practical interdisciplinarity stemming from its prolonged history.