“I always work a bit from something that happens to me, or dreams, or stories I hear,” says Valgerður Sigurðardóttir, walking through the white, open space of Ásmundarsalur. “It’s always personal. It might be more like starting from some feeling that I want to portray.”
She pauses and takes a few steps closer to a large ceramic painting of a naked woman hanging by one hand on a tree.
“After I had my daughter, I sometimes got really angry,” she says. The piece, titled Frumkona (Primal Woman), taps into those deep, primal feelings that society, in Valgerður’s opinion, tries to suppress. “It’s not socially acceptable to be angry and have all these instincts. I was thinking about the generations before us — whether back in the day, when we lived in caves, it was more acceptable to let these feelings out.”
Pieces of a whole
Valgerður, or Vala for short, is one of those Icelandic artists perhaps better known abroad than at home. Almost a decade ago, she relocated to Belgium to pursue a master’s degree from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent. Now based in Antwerp and represented by Keteleer Gallery, she regularly holds exhibitions in Europe and participates in art fairs around the world. According to Vala, Belgium has a strong collector scene, which has allowed her to make a living solely from her art — though, she admits, “it’s not like a luxurious lifestyle.”
Aspects, currently on view at Ásmundarsarsalur, is Vala’s first solo exhibition in Iceland since she moved to Belgium.
The exhibition consists of six ceramic paintings in various sizes that, at first glance, look like one large piece chopped up into rows of square tiles. But in fact, Vala makes each tile individually and then pieces them together like a giant puzzle. What immediately catches my attention is that each painting depicts a woman — each shown from a new angle.
“I wanted to do something about women in general — the different aspects of women, motherhood, families, placing themselves in the world, and thinking about what shapes people,” Vala explains.
A dash of history, a touch of alchemy
The works on display are made in Vala’s distinctive style — slightly naive and childlike — but each draws on art history, mythology, astrology, and everyday life.
The biggest painting, Venus in Libra (156 x 202 cm), depicts a pregnant woman lying on a bed against a deep blue background, scattered with so-called whimsical stars with faces. In this work, Vala thinks about how stars shape us. It’s simultaneously a nod to her interest in astrology and Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night, while also referencing Titian’s Venus of Urbino and Édouard Manet’s Olympia.
Behind these seemingly simple tiles lies a bit of alchemy. Each tile requires five layers of glazing, and due to metal oxidation that happens in the kiln, some colours end up completely different from how they appear when applied. “The colour blue might look pink when I’m putting it on,” says Vala.
Once you look closer, you notice that individual tiles have cracks, and some lines don’t quite match up. Vala explains that glazed tiles shrink in the kiln, and it’s impossible to predict whether or not the final lines will align. At first, these imperfections stressed her, but she learned to appreciate them. “Now I really like them. They give [the work] a nice character, and make it look a bit old somehow. I’m really happy with them,” she says.
Vala’s interest in art history can also be traced in other works. Húð við húð (Skin to Skin), which shows a mother breastfeeding her child, draws inspiration from the iconic painting Madonna and Child by Duccio di Buoninsegna. In some pieces, this influence is so subtle that without Vala’s explanation, it would be nearly impossible to detect. In Sköpun (Creation), for example, the two characters touch noses. “I was thinking about Michelangelo here,” Vala says, referring to The Creation of Adam, on the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling.
The characters in this piece, again, a mother and a child, stand against the background of a huge, fluffy cloud. “After I had my daughter, I had a foggy brain. I couldn’t remember things,” Vala explains. “I always felt like I couldn’t focus on anything except one small thing at a time.” This postpartum brain fog inspired many of her previous works, including older paintings where clouds are a central theme.
The paths we take
In her practice, Vala usually starts with the harder elements of a painting, slowly moving to the easier ones — like tiles painted in a single colour. Her most complex work in the exhibition is Kvísl (Stages), featuring a group of women of different ages sitting on the couch.
“It’s based on a family portrait from the day that I came home from the hospital after being born,” Vala explains. “They’re not my siblings. They’re female characters in my family, and their ages are not correct — this one is actually my aunt, my mom’s sister, but she’s young here,” she clarifies.
In this work, Vala mixes people and ages, focusing on the female characters who influenced her growing up. We all start the same, she underlines, comparing it to a tree with branches going in different directions — but then each of us takes a different path. “Even if you had the same conditions growing up, why are we all so different?” Vala asks through this piece.
Unconscious influences
In addition to the paintings, the exhibition also includes a book of Vala’s drawings on paper and ceramic work from 2023 to now, published by Posture Editions. Titled I must drink all the water, the beautifully crafted book offers a glimpse into Vala’s creative world, where mundane moments often outweigh stories that seem more grand — a couple at a dinner table, a woman getting ready for a bath, a horse, a pig and other animals and humans on a tree. “The title is quite open,” Vala says. “It was something my daughter said when I was about to go to a meeting. I had another title in mind, but just as I was about to go, she said, ‘First, I must drink all the water,’ before she could say goodbye to me,” she recalls. “It kind of stuck with me. It’s like ‘I must sail all the oceans,’ ‘I must climb all the mountains,” Vala adds with a smile.
I ask her how intentional these moments are — the toddler’s mumbling, her repeated returns to art history — in shaping her work.
“I always loved art history,” she says. “But when I turned 30, my sister gave me a really nice collection of art history books that my father used to own. At home, I regularly take a book out, read and look at the images. This time it was maybe even more than usual,” she smiles, shaking her head as if to say that these homages are never fully conscious. “Everything shapes you.”
Aspects by Valgerður Sigurðardóttir is showing at Ásmundarsalur until August 10.
Buy subscriptions, t-shirts and more from our shop right here!
