Words by

Jóhanna Pétursdóttir

Mimì Enna is the artist sitting at the steps of the SÍM Gallery with a sign stating, “This is a picture of Reykjavík. If you want to see other places please help me.” The artist from Bologna, Italy uses photography, video, performances, and installations to get her message across.

“I want to offer familiar situations through my work,” she says. “That is why I sit here begging. I want to connect things that are usually in an exhibition with the people on the street.” Although she admits, laughing: “I also kind of need the money to travel around Iceland.”

Her art aspires to reflect on everyday things, for example by taking screenshots of Google Maps, or, as she did in Reykjavík, by begging. When you go to exhibitions, it is considered normal that you pay for them. Mimì takes the art out of the exhibition and connects it with something we all know: begging.

“In usual life I’d never beg because I’d be scared of what people would think or that someone else might need the money more than I do,” she says. “But in my work I want to be free from this limitation in morals and ethics.”

She is currently studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, where she recently participated in a citywide public art project. For her contribution, she sought to reinvent and provoke thought about the separation of public and private space. Therefore she asked everyone living on her block to put their domestic objects out on the street. She won the contest, and got the opportunity to visit Iceland in a two-week residency in a collective exhibition with artist from all over the world.

“I didn’t expect it but people actually helped me out and I got to travel a lot around the island,” she says. “Yesterday I went to Jökulsárlón (the Glacier Lagoon). It was the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. It was as if fake. I made some videos there for other exhibitions but I took them all out of focus as I don’t want to focus on it but rather on the light that reflects on it.”

Have a look at here work here!