Sacred Spaces, Sacred Places: Icelandic Artists In Varanasi

“What happens when artists are transported to a studio far away from the comfort zone of the familiar?” This question lies at the heart of the project that brought Among Gods and Mortals: Icelandic Artists in Varanasi to life — an exhibition currently on view at the charming Listasafn Árnesinga in Hveragerði, just a 40-minute drive from Reykjavík.

From sparsely populated Iceland, with its volcanic landscapes and crystal-clear waters, six established artists travelled to the spiritual city of Varanasi, where open-air cremations are performed on the Ganges River, narrow alleyways pulse with life, and a unique mix of sacred and pungent smells activates your senses, for a month-long stay at Kriti Gallery and Anandvan Residency.

Where it started

The exhibition’s idea traces back to photographer and writer Einar Falur Ingólfsson, who, since his first trip in 1999, has frequently returned to India over the years. There, he was introduced to founders of Kriti Gallery, Navneet Raman and Petra Manefeld, and historian Ajay Pandey, who guides artists in residence through the city. Einar Falur got the idea to bring a group of artists — Eygló Harðardóttir, Guðjón Ketilsson, Margrét H. Blöndal, Sigurður Árni Sigurðsson, Sólveig Aðalsteinsdóttir — from Iceland to Kriti to see what might emerge from their time spent in the holy city.

“What’s really important is they weren’t making art of India,” stresses curator Pari Stave as we meet in Reykjavík a few days after I visited the exhibition. “They were taking from their experience of this place and using what was relevant to them in their works. The works are very much their works, but it just happens that they’re inflected with this influence of having been to India.”

“Among Gods and Mortals” by Atli Freyr Steinsson

Moving images

Working with the concept of time has become an important focus of Einar Falur’s recent work. Take for example his documentation of the weather over the course of a year, or his project following in the footsteps of Iceland’s first photographer, Sigfús Eymundsson. In India, he approached his surroundings through a similar patient lens, presenting at the exhibition a triptych of photographs taken from the exact same angle year after year — showing subtle shifts in a building’s facade and the environment around it. Another of his images on view captures a skinny horse standing quietly amid the chaos of Indian infrastructure: trash, tangled wires, residential buildings and all sorts of transport coexisting together.

“They capture these fleeting moments that you could just walk by.”

“It almost feels like this ghostly image,” says Pari. “That’s a very beautiful picture. It interests me because it may not necessarily be a picture that an Indian photographer would take,” says Pari. “Maybe it takes an outsider’s view of looking in.”

The opposite wall displays a series of “moving images” presented as a continuous loop with sound. They capture moments from daily life in Varanasi — morning commute on a cycle rickshaw, the chatter of street vendors, empty alleys where not much seems to happen at all. But once you add the city’s trademark splash of colour and the layered soundtrack of honks and chants, the whole room comes to life.

“They capture these fleeting moments that you could just walk by, or they might just seem like part of the theatre of the street. But then when you look closely at them, each one of them is a little narrative that has a beautiful story to it,” Pari explains. You wouldn’t expect to be so easily transported from an indigo-blue room in sleepy Hveragerði to India on this Sunday afternoon, but there you are.

Varanasi forms and palettes

Pari tells me the artists who visited the residency in 2023 and 2024 took full advantage of immersing themselves in a new and strange environment. “It was hot, humid, steamy and rainy. Lush vegetation, streets filled with people, and a whole different way of navigating on the street too — because of the crowds and just the sounds, the scents, the flavours, and the colour,” she recalls. “It can’t help but be digested.”

Artist Eygló Harðardóttir, for example, was particularly inspired by a traditional raga music concert during her stay and created a series of paintings titled Raga – Tilbrigði í lit /Colours of Raga. “For those paintings, she used pure pigments that she had bought in Jaipur,” Pari explains. Using traditional miniature brushes, Eygló achieves a delicate finesse in the works, using pigments made from plants and semi-precious stones mixed with a binding solution.

Similarly, Guðjón Ketilsson found inspiration after a visit to the archaeological site at Sarnath. Drawing from the site’s carved votive stone stupas, Guðjón created a series of pencil drawings exploring the dome-shaped form of the stupa. After returning to Iceland, he expanded this idea into a series of wooden sculptures of varying sizes, installed on pedestals. The sculptures are painted in different shades of saffron — a colour that caught Guðjón’s eye during his stay in India.

In addition to the beautiful birch tendril sculptures, Sólveig Aðalsteinsdóttir’s residency inspired a series of eight-panel black outline drawings, for which she even took a course in Chinese calligraphy to master controlling a thick brush. “She’s one of these artists who walks, observes and absorbs what she sees,” says Pari. “These black ink drawings on paper came out of what she was seeing in the streetscape — the profile of a sacred cow’s back, or just the undulation of the river. She was picking up on the rhythms that she found in the street life and channelling them into this minimalist but highly evocative line. It’s just one line coursing through several pieces of paper, but it’s very powerful,” Pari adds.

Margrét H. Blöndal, known for her extraordinary sense of colour, brought to the exhibition 16 minimalist drawings inspired by what she observed on the streets of Varanasi — the heat, humidity, stray dogs, the sound of car horns. Sigurður Árni Sigurðsson contributed two-dimensional paintings that appear three-dimensional thanks to hovering, perforated forms. “He was picking up maybe not so much on the shapes he was seeing in the landscape, but on the colour,” says Pari.

One cannot think of two cultures more starkly opposite than Iceland and India, both culturally and socially. But Pari stresses once again that this exhibition is not about learning about India; instead, you’ll actually learn more about these six artists. “For artists, the studio is a sacred place,” she says. “It’s where you go to contemplate, to think and to work. What’s so interesting to me is seeing what happens in that exciting moment when the artists’ sacred spaces are transported to [another] sacred place.”

Among Gods and Mortals: Icelandic Artists in Varanasi is on view at Listasafn Árnesinga in Hveragerði until August 24. Entry to the museum is free. Don’t miss the curator talk with Pari Stave on July 5 at 15:00.