Motivational Award 2024: Brák Jónsdóttir
Brák Jónsdóttir (b. 1996) is the recipient of the Motivational Award of the Icelandic Art Prize 2024 for her exhibition Possible Oddkin in the Nordic House’s Greenhouse in Reykjavík.
Brák Jónsdóttir (b. 1996) is the recipient of the Motivational Award of the Icelandic Art Prize 2024 for her exhibition Possible Oddkin in the Nordic House’s Greenhouse in Reykjavík. Brák graduated with a BA in Fine Arts from the Iceland University of the Arts in 2021. Since graduating, she has initiated various visual art projects and exhibited in a number of art museums, festivals and exhibition spaces around Iceland and abroad.
On display at the exhibition were sculptures created from natural minerals, tree bark and aluminium. Both in the artworks and the curator’s text there is a sense of humour as well as more serious musings about the connection between body, soul and environment. The placement of the works in the Nordic House’s Greenhouse also plays a pivotal role in Brák’s installation. In her choice of location, she directly references human-made environments that create prime conditions for sowing, nourishing, nurturing and growth. Curator Odda Júlía Snorradóttir’s text refers to something odd occurring here, some unfolding of several beings whose appearance is a mystery until they are fully grown. In that uncertain, intermediary situation, the possibilities of Brák’s sculptures and the vivid imagery of her work can be found. The becoming meets the ancient, the connection often being Brák’s physical approach to her sculptures, as her performances tend to occur through her touch upon— or a sort of dance with—her sculptures.
Brák Jónsdóttir: Possible Oddkin. The Nordic House, 2023. Photo: Pétur Thomsen
Brák Jónsdóttir: Osseous Bodies. The Nordic House, 2023. Photo: Pétur Thomsen
The jury finds that Brák’s sculptures and her performative connection with many of them brings an interesting quality to the visual arts. They fuse many of the more pressing contemporary questions about the connection between human and nature, growth processes, and the role of imagination in creating realities at the conjunction of the possible and impossible.
The works are intriguing, igniting many of the body capsule's centres, which induce challenging and pleasant emotional reactions. The works also distinctly mirror Brák’s sharp ideological vision, as she has created an intriguing well of possibilities early in her career, which will continue to develop in interesting ways.
