A curatorial team has been selected to curate Skaftfell’s summer and anniversary exhibition this year; C A B L E. The exhibition will open on June 16 marking the 20th anniversary of Skaftell – Center for Visual Art. An open call was made last year for the summer exhibition for the first time, primarily to invite new parties to engage with the Center. Thirty applications were reviewed by Skaftfell’s panel and the proposal for C B P L E came out on top. The curatorial team consists of artist, art historian and curator Aðalheiður Valgeirsdóttir and Aldís Arnardottir, art theorist and historian. The project is supported by the Icelandic Visual Arts Fund and the East Iceland Regional Development Fund.
The exhibition features works by five Icelandic artists, Sigurður Guðjónsson, Tumi Magnússon, Unnar Örn Auðarsson, Þórdís Aðalsteinsdóttir and Þórdís Jónsdóttir and is to be made in partnership with Skaftfell´s long time collaborator the Technical Museum of East Iceland, also located in Seyðisfjörður. The exhibition will highlight the major changes and advances that communication technology has entailed. Overload of information and increasingly fast-paced communication in the present time provokes ideas about the submarine cable – the cord that carried telephone communication for the first time in Iceland over a century ago and was connected to land in Seyðisfjörður. The Technical and local history heritage museum places an emphasis on technological progress and craftsmanship in Iceland from 1880 to date. The museum’s displays include objects and information illuminating advances in technology and preserve old printing facilities, a machine shop a forge and a special department is dedicated especially to the history of the telephone in Iceland.
Aðalheiður’s and Aldís’s proposal touches on topics that have been surfacing in-house in Skaftfell in recent times, with contemporary art always in the foreground. The proposal’s subject matter simultaneously addresses the history of the village and Iceland’s first connection to mainland. While one artist in the exhibition is a local from Seyðisfjörður some of the artists have never exhibited their work in Skaftfell before, a few works will be made side specific in collaboration with the Technical Museum.
Three of the artists along with the curators recently visited Seyðisfjörður on a research trip and among other things examined the original cable at the Technical Museum.
