Una Björk Sigurðardóttir

Una B. Sigurðardóttir completed her BA degree from the Iceland Academy of the Arts in the spring of 2008. She is an artist and a poet living and working in Reykjavík, she also teaches figure drawing at a secondary grammar school.

She is a member of Crymo gallery, an artist-run, non-profit gallery, and currently sits on its board of management. In addition she runs a studio at Hvefisgata 61 in collaboration with other artists and writers. She has been involved in the organization of many artistic events, participated in numerous exhibitions in Iceland and abroad, and given performances and readings of her own works.

Her body of work is marked by multiplicity and the desire to experiment with materials, medium and method. Therefore she has chosen not to limit herself to a specific medium, although she has increasingly given emphasis to text, sculpture, painting, collage, and the fusion of and search for new mediums.

Una has explored the relationship between text and other mediums, such as performance- and video art, drawings and audio work. For example, three books with her texts and drawings, “The Adventures of the Sick Girl”, “The Sick Girl Kills” and “Soap Tales” were published in 2007.

Since 2010 she has individually, and in collaboration with artist Rakel McMahon, experimented with new mediums and forms of presentation, such as creating huge advertising stickers displayed in windows and manufacturing false product packaging. By this they are testing the border between the art and consumerism.

In Una’s works there are underlying narratives, and although she critically examines serious subject matter, her work is liberally spiked with humor. Una seeks to process her personal vision of society and environment in the context of the ideological assumptions and global realities that modern man is faced with. Therefore many images of consumerism and popular culture, as well as symbols of dominant ideologies, have become motifs in her work.