Breathing Room: Iceland Begins The New Year With A Commercial Break

In the first few days of January, we’ve seen headline after headline of bad news from around the world: a tragic fire, war continuing to rage on the European continent, one country having set their eyes on another (or perhaps a few others), the weather going from almost tropical in the East of Iceland to capital cities on the mainland drowning in snowstorms. The already consumerism-driven December quickly shifted into Christmas sale January, or Veganuary, or Dry January, depending on which end of the consumer chain you are on. The amount of information, buzz, notifications a regular person with a smartphone gets in a day is probably more than our ancestors got in their lifetime. We are online, hence, information has to reach us, and marketers will do anything for us to buy something in the meantime. So, when I drive along Nesbraut at dusk on first day of January, as the majority of the population are still huddled in the comfort of their homes, instead of billboards telling me about a good deal at Krónan or suggesting I take Strætó (one does wonder how often the people behind that campaign actually use public transport), I see art. And it feels surprisingly refreshing.

Ad days are over

Art taking over billboards in Reykjavík isn’t a hacker attack or a coup by an underground artist collective, it’s an annual project organised by Y Gallery in collaboration with the Reykjavík Art Museum and Billboard, the local billboard company.

Known as Auglýsingahlé, or “commercial break” in English, the project began five years ago, growing out of an idea from Y Gallery. As Sigurður Atli Sigurðsson, visual artist and director of Y Gallery, tells me, the concept itself isn’t exactly new.

“Art taking over billboards in Reykjavík isn’t a hacker attack or a coup by an underground artist collective, it’s an annual project organised by Y Gallery in collaboration with the Reykjavík Art Museum and Billboard, the local billboard company.”

“This has been done over and over again throughout art history with Jeff Koons and other artists [Joseph Kosuth, Guerrilla Girls, Felix Gonzalez-Torres just to add a few] that have taken billboards as kind of exhibition venue,” he says, “With these electronic billboards, it becomes a bit easier to kind of transform the whole city. It allows us to use all of the 500 screens around the city at once and take over the whole public space with this one work by an artist.”

The initiative takes over January 1-3, starting at midnight on New Year’s Eve and appears on over 550 digital screens and billboards, provided free of charge by Billboard.

“It’s a perfect time as well to do this — to start a new year with a new work in the dark. It’s very, kind of…” Sigurður Atli is looking for the right word. “Very visible,” he says, quickly adding, “It’s amazing actually how many people see the work. It’s estimated that around 80 percent of people in the city see it every day.”

Y Gallery collaborates with the Reykjavík Art Museum and Billboard, which provides one million krónur to the selected artist to produce the work. Applications are accepted through an open call and reviewed by a jury that includes representatives from the three organisers, as well as a representative from SÍM (the Association of Icelandic Visual Artists). After the project’s completion, the piece is donated to the Reykjavík Art Museum’s collection.

There are some technical specifications on what the artwork can be — for example, it cannot be a video or a moving image, but it can be a series of images that change every eight seconds.

“That’s based on what is allowed by the government,” Sigurður Atli explains. “You cannot have video screens in public space. It’s more like regular traffic regulations that provide the framework of what’s possible. Those are kind of technical constraints, but what we are looking at when we’re selecting the work is that it’s interesting over a period of time — three whole days. It needs to be kind of evolving in some way, and it needs to also speak to the medium, or the platform itself.”

Over the years, the artists who exhibited their work through the project include Hrafnkell Sigurðsson, Sigurður Ámundason, Haraldur Jónsson, and Roni Horn. Hrafnkell Sigurðsson ended up winning the Icelandic Visual Art Prize for his piece Upplausn, showcased during the first-ever Auglýsingahlé. “He worked with these kind of digital glitches, and a lot of people thought the screens were malfunctioning but it was actually pixels taken from out of space and kind of enlarged to make these very beautiful, atmospheric visuals,” Sigurður Atli explains. “And then, for example, Sigurður Ámundason, he was making these kind of nonsense logos that were displayed on the screens. So, that’s more kind of talking to their usage as advertising platforms.”

Digital sundial

The artist whose work was selected to appear on Reykjavík’s billboards at the start of 2026 is Þórdís Erla Zoëga, with her piece Sólarhringur. Þórdís draws attention to how circadian rhythms are disrupted by the blue light emitted from our screens almost 24/7. At the heart of the work is the idea of urban screens shifting with the natural daylight, with colours gradually changing over time. Drawing from the colours of the sky throughout the year, the artwork features a central circle that can be read as the sun. The images change in line with the cycle of the day, transforming the billboards around town into a kind of sundial.

“Þórdís’s work speaks more to the time we’re in — solstice, the light, and the colours of the sky,” says Sigurður Atli. “We were really lucky that we had a clear sky that, for the past few days, when the work was up, you could see all the different nuances and colour spectrums of the sky playing with the work.”

Indeed, the timing, and the weather couldn’t have been better for noticing the work take over the city. Sometimes consciously, sometimes unwillingly, you spot how the colours shifted and the circle moved across a screen on a bus stop or by the side of the road. The changes are so subtle, and yet, set against the backdrop of a full moon and a crisp January sky, the piece offers a sense of hope, or a suggestion of a clean slate.

“Exactly,” Sigurður Atli says. “People come to me very often with this sentiment that it’s such a good way to come into the new year.”

“The only kind of negative thing that I have heard is that people are confused,” he adds. “I’ve heard this every time, and I think that’s just wonderful. You know, it’s great to confuse people a little bit. It’s just healthy to be confused and not know what something is for a while, and then you figure it out, maybe, or not.”

Auglýsingahlé took place from January 1-3, spreading across all digital billboards in Reykjavík. The selected artist for 2026 was Þórdís Erla Zoëga. An open call for next year’s edition will open in the autumn.