The Most Difficult Game: Exploring the immigrant experience at Gallery Port

What is the immigrant experience in Iceland? While the question is worth considering, particularly among Icelanders and government officials, it’s impossible to answer. Every individual who has moved to this island nation has had their own unique journey and experiences it in their own way, coloured by their personalities, their general outlooks on life, their skill sets and expectations.

For a group of artists exhibiting at Gallery Port, another factor contributing to the immigrant experience is language — or, rather, one’s ability to learn it.

“Whenever Natka and I see each other, we usually end up discussing our experiences with speaking Icelandic,” says Patty Spyrakos of her conversations with fellow artist Natka Klimowicz. “It’s usually me asking which classes she’s taken.”

“It’s always in rooms of Icelandic people and us two foreigners,” Natka chimes in. “So then we get to this topic; the very same topic each time of not being able to speak with them and us being on the periphery.”

That feeling of being alone even in a group of Icelanders is one that many immigrants can relate to, whether they’ve just moved to the country or they’ve been here for a decade or longer. It’s always going to be a struggle; it’s always going to be difficult.

Exploring the struggle

It’s that recurring conversation about the struggle of language learning and belonging that kicked off Patty and Natka’s idea to co-curate an exhibition of immigrant artists. The exhibition is titled “Erfið – Leikar,” a play on erfiðleikar, meaning difficulties (yes, they asked an Icelander to translate) that happens to break down amusingly into the words erfið, meaning hard or difficult, and leikar, meaning games, or difficult play.

“I thought this was brilliant,” says Natka of learning the new word. “It’s just what it is for me, living here and trying to learn this language — it’s just such ‘hard play.’ It’s really tough, the rules of this game that I’m struggling to understand. So that’s how it came together; this word was the foundation of the thing and then we thought of who could join us on this struggle exploration.”

Trying to navigate this difficult game with Natka and Patty are artists Julie Sjöfn Gasiglia and Pola Sutryk.

The work each will be exhibiting at Erfið – Leikar is as different as each artist’s origin story in Iceland, which itself underscores the sometimes contrasting experiencing immigrants can have in Iceland. Patty found inspiration in the personal items that Icelanders in generations past would be buried with, looking to them as an indication of parts of culture worth preserving. Natka is working with car mirrors to capture the feelings of being a passenger and being separated from life. Julie’s work plays with this idea that what can seem completely abstract or inaccessible could possibly carry meaning over time. Pola, meanwhile, will open the exhibition with an edible installation that presents Icelandic ingredients in non-Icelandic ways, and will showcase a series of miniatures for the duration of its run.

The local foreigner

Though the work that each of the artists will be presenting over the course of the inhibition vary, and the experiences of the women that inspired their work vary, the concept of being a “local foreigner” binds them. Each of them, like other immigrants working in other fields, is aware that, though they live here, they are not from here. They are not part of the tight-knit group of Icelanders who probe eachother’s genealogy in search of connection (surprise, they’re cousins!) or who have known eachother since their first day of leikskóli.

Standing out as the optimist in the group — who also happens to have been in Iceland the longest, at 11 years — Julie reflects on what being a “local foreigner” adds to her life, rather than what she might be missing out on. “I think it’s a big freedom to be this local foreigner,” she says. “There’s no expectation for who I should be, because I am this foreigner anyway. I am an outsider anyway. So it gives me the freedom to decide where I place myself and how.”

“I’m never going to belong fully, I’m never going to be Icelandic,” she continues, “so it gives me this freedom of just becoming who it is that I really want to be.”

Highlighting again how different every immigrant experience is, Natka counters Julie’s expression of freedom with her own recollection of having to prove herself and her value as a Polish person moving to Iceland.

“I feel like it’s very different for me coming from Poland,” Natka says. “I feel like the first thing I had to do was to prove to people that I am an educated person that can speak English and I have something to offer. Because as a Polish person, I suddenly experienced firsthand that I am seen as a person that comes here not caring about the place, only to make money, and that I’m a cheap workforce — that’s it.”

That need to establish herself is now sometimes at odds with Natka’s drive to learn Icelandic. The thought of being reduced to speaking like a child in Iceland after spending several years actively disproving the negative stereotypes too many Icelanders harbour about Polish immigrants — who comprise 6% of the population — feels like a step backward.

Diversity on display

While the initial spark for Erfið – Leikar may have been the artists’ shared, yet still distinct, experiences of immigrating to Iceland and being a local foreigner here, the art they’ve created for the exhibition and the messages they are expressing highlight that they are all more than one thing. Each of them is more than a foreigner, more than an artist, more than what some in Icelandic society might consider them.

“I’m conflicted that we are here, this group of foreign women, talking about being a foreigner, and almost forgetting to talk about all the other things that we are alongside being a foreigner,” Julie concludes with a laugh. “I hope that the diversity of what we are showing and how our works sparked from the same place of being foreigners and struggling shows how very diverse people we are as well — we are so much more than just a foreigner.”

Erfið – Leikar opened at Gallery Port (Hallgerðargata 19-23) on August 10. The exhibition runs until August 31. Check out the Facebook listing here. Don’t miss it.