This is how Gabríela Friðriksdóttir responds when we ask her what she’s thinking about and investigating in her art these days.
You really shouldn’t wonder why Gabríela is Grapevine’s favourite local artist, period. With all due respect to the others (and a lot is due), she is very evidently leagues beyond her contemporaries in so many respects. Her work is pointed; it has substance, depth, it is the result of research and contemplation. It asks ancient questions, some of which we continually try and bury in our day to day. It is challenging. And it looks fucking awesome, too.
These days, Gabríela is working towards “what the heart knows is best,” she tells us. “The shows in Germany and America, in Borgarleikhúsið and in other places. But life is of course large and great, like Allah, and Hafiz, the old one of the Sand.”
Her work is not currently on display in any Reykjavík galleries, but it will be. You may however view her art in various books and publications to be found in Borgarbókasafn and local bookstores, and in the in-development neighbourhood of Urriðaholt, where her collaboration with French design team M/M, Táknatréð (“The Symbol Tree”) may be viewed.
She tells us the head she is posing with belongs to contemporary dance master Erna Ómarsdóttir, and that her immediate plans involve “working with the ones I love.”
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