Opening: Sediment and Signal at The Nordic House

11.10.2025

–23.11.2025

17:00

–19:00

Sequences XII: Pause presents the exhibition Sediment and Signal at the Nordic House. The official opening will take place between 5-7pm on 11 October.

Sediment and Signal gathers artists attuning to temporalities beyond human scale. Featuring Erna Skúladóttir, Pétur Thomsen, Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir and Mark Wilson, Julie Sjöfn Gasiglia, Rhoda Ting & Mikkel Bojesen, Ragna Róbertsdóttir, Thomas Pausz, and Wauhaus, the exhibition reflects on glacial shifts, fungal networks, geological formations, and other slow-moving life systems. The exhibition invites a deliberate slowing down, revealing nature’s layered, cyclical time. Through deep observation, the works reposition slowness as care, aligning human rhythms with the planet’s vast and intricate timescales.

Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson eru íslensk-breskt listamannatvíeyki sem rannsakar tengsl manns og annarra lífvera í gegnum rannsóknardrifnar innsetningar, ljósmyndir, vídeó og texta. Frá því snemma á 21. öldinni hafa þau kannað menningarlegar og vistfræðilegar afleiðingar tilfærslu tegunda, útrýmingar og verndunar. Þekkt verkefni þeirra – eins og Visitations: Polar Bears Out of Place – sameina vettvangsrannsóknir, skjalasöfn og þverfaglegt samstarf til að spyrja hvernig við skilgreinum og hugum að öðrum lífverum, og afhjúpa þannig margbreytilegar og oft mótsagnakenndar afstöðu mannsins til náttúrunnar.

Time and Tide (2022) og Time and Again (2023) eru lóðrétt vídeóverk sem flétta saman hljóð og mynd með frásögnum af komu ísbjarna til Íslands. Þau kalla fram brothætt mót mannlegrar og ómannlegra sagna. Í samspili við skúlptúrverk víkka þau út frásagnaraðferðir um efni og vistfræði. Matrix (Svalbard) (2020), er handblásinn glerskúlptúr í hlutfallinu 1:20, miðað við raunverulegt ísbjarnarhýsi á Svalbarða. Skúlptúrinn byggir á vísindateikningum norskra rannsakenda og jarðtengir þemu verksins um búsvæði og nærveru í brothættri efnislegri mynd og ljósi. Úr innsetningunni The Secret Garden spretta Totemic Objects (2023), skúlptúrar úr rekaviði, leir og dýraleifum sem umbreytast í blendingaform, á mörkum minja og framtíðarsteingervinga. Þau vísa til samofins lífs og varnarleysis þess. Saman eru þessi verk hluti af langtímarannsóknarverkefninu Visitations, sem listamennirnir hlutu Íslensku myndlistarverðlaunin fyrir árið 2022, og halda áfram að kanna síbreytileg mörk á milli tegunda, landslags og goðsagna.

Erna Skúladóttir often engages with themes of time, geology, and environmental transformation. She documents the subtle yet profound impact of climate change on natural forms. Erna works with glacial and geological time, capturing the slow movements and transformations of Iceland’s landscapes. Her installations document the intersection of climate change and natural history, asking viewers to contemplate the scale and fragility of environments shaped over millennia. 

In Yfirborð, Erna Skúladóttir meditates on the fragility and flux of geological materiality, exposing the illusion of solidity within landscapes. Her manipulation of unfired clay and natural materials speaks to the constant transformation occurring beneath the surface of seemingly stable matter. By working with materials that dry, crack, and decay over time, her installations insist on the viewer’s attunement to slow, almost imperceptible changes. Skúladóttir’s work translates geological processes into sculptural form, mirroring how time operates on both emotional and environmental scales.

Julie Sjöfn Gasiglia (b. 1990, France) is an Icelandic–French artist whose work is rooted in the exploration of narratives that interlace humans with the more-than-human world—the relationships that surround us and the ecosystems that dwell within our own bodies.

Her sculptures and installations become meditations on slowness, transformation, responsibility, and interconnectedness. These man-made creatures pose questions about the sustainability of systems and the dysfunctions that arise within them.

In a world of overstimulation, she offers an invitation to listen with the whole body, expanding our capacity to notice, feel, and respond to the living world.

Her multi-sensory installations foreground the intimate bonds between humans and more-than-human beings. Whether through speaker-embedded ceramics or movement-activated environments, her practice slows perception and fosters interspecies empathy. Sounds drawn from the artist’s own microbiome travel through fired clay, while the viewers’ presence influences the rhythm and flow of fluids—reminders of connections beyond language that invite a sensorial encounter.

Pétur Thomsen focuses on the transformation of land through human intervention. He examines the friction between industrial development and fragile ecosystems, creating images that are both documentary and critical. Pétur Thomsen turns his lens toward landscapes under transformation, documenting the encroachment of human intervention on natural systems. His long-term photographic series charts the incremental shifts in the land. Thomsen draws attention to the marks of human intervention; mines, tree plantations, and cultivated land. The stark contrasts and nocturnal stillness suggest a slow violence at work, change that creeps rather than crashes.

In Teigskógur, Pétur presents a series of photographs taken in the forest Teigskógur, capturing the aftermath of a violent human intervention in a once-pristine forest. The images document the moment when a mulcher was used to tear through the birch trees, clearing the way for a highly controversial road construction project. Presented in a grid, the close-up shots of shredded wood, broken branches, and disturbed moss lay bare the brutality of this mechanized intrusion. The repetition and variation across the frames evoke a sense of systematic destruction, making visible a slow violence often hidden in infrastructural development.

Ragna Róbertsdóttir is an Icelandic artist whose multidisciplinary practice explores the seasonal cycles of growth, decay, and regeneration through delicate, often ephemeral materials. Her work reflects on impermanence, crafting a visual language of slow unfolding, blossoming, withering, transforming, that speaks to nature’s quiet endurance. By working with materials like lava rock, turf, salt, and clay, Róbertsdóttir transforms geological processes into poetic gestures. Her compositions appear simple, yet they demand prolonged contemplation. 

Ragna Róbertsdóttir’s minimalist sculptures and outdoor interventions Timescape, Saltscape, and Path are rooted in Iceland’s elemental materiality, evoking the slow erosion, formation, and sedimentation of the land itself. Each granule or fragment seems suspended in geological memory, marking the passage of millennia in a single crystalline gesture. These works operate as slow clocks, capturing the sediment of centuries and positioning nature not as a backdrop to human life, but as its measure and mirror. At the entrance of the Nordic House, copper plates are embedded into the ground, quietly catching light and weather over time, marking thresholds and inviting a slowed, attentive mode of arrival. She similarly marks a pathway in the marsh of Nordic House with fragments of red lava, stone, and sediment, creating a tactile and visual disruption that amplifies the terrain’s geological memory. 

Rhoda Ting (f. 1985, Ástralía) og Mikkel Bojesen (f. 1988, Danmörk) eru listamannatvíeyki með aðsetur í Kaupmannahöfn sem starfa á mörkum lista og vísinda. Þau beina athyglinni að virkni ómannlegra fyrirbæra og mögulegum framtíðarsviðsmyndum, og nýta lifandi lífverur og rannsóknarefni í skúlptúr- og gjörninga innsetningar. Með þverfaglegu samstarfi ögra þau mannmiðaðri frásögn og leggja til nýjar leiðir til samlífis. Í samstarfi við vísindamenn vinna þau með bakteríur, gró og aðrar lífverur til að gera ósýnileg ferli jarðar sýnileg. Með því að rækta lifandi kerfi í skúlptúrlegu samhengi beina þau sjónum að samvinnu milli tegunda og tímaskölum sem eru langt handan mannlegrar skynjunar.

Deep Time býður áhorfendum að stíga út úr þröngum ramma mannlegs tímaskyns og gera sýnilega jarðfræðilega tímaskala sem urðu til á undan mannkyninu og munu vara löngu eftir það. Með því að kynna þróunarsafn jarðarinnar setur verkið mannlega tilvist í samhengi sem smávægilegt augnablik í sögu plánetunnar. Áhrifin eru bæði auðmýkjandi og hugleiðandi – áhorfandinn neyðist til að sleppa tökum á hraða og flýti og taka í staðinn upp jarðfræðilegt þolgæði og heimsfræðilega íhugun.

Rhizome færir hins vegar smásjárlífið í brennidepil, þar sem áherslan er á samtvinnuð, ólínuleg og dreifð net svepparíkisins. Innsetningin, sem samanstendur af petrískálum með lifandi sveppum, virkar sem lifandi kerfi – hægt, ófyrirsjáanlegt samstarf á milli listar og lífvera. Með þessum hætti tileinkar tvíeykið sér bókstaflega hugmyndafræði „hægrar listar“: verkið þróast með tímanum, breytist ófyrirsjáanlega og hafnar sýningarlegum yfirborðsáhrifum. Verkefni þeirra ögra ekki aðeins athyglisgáfu áhorfandans heldur einnig skilningi hans á þróunar-, vistfræðilegum og fagurfræðilegum kerfum.

(IS/FR)

Thomas Pausz is a visual artist and speculative designer based in Reykjavík. He creates sculptural and conceptual works that explore post-human ethics, ecological inquiry, environmental storytelling, and the possibility of multispecies coexistence. Pausz’s installations often evoke hybrid worlds that exist between natural systems and human intervention. His ecological media practice creates “frictions” between life forms and technologies, probing the haunted intersections between biology, computation, and environmental ethics. 

In his work Double Capture, he invites us into the intimate, sensuous choreography of pollination, not as a biological process alone, but as a relational, time-based performance between species. The greenhouse becomes a living instrument, attuned to the secret signals exchanged between flowers and their pollinators: the vibratory language of touch, color, scent, and invisible electromagnetic pulses. Double Capture refers to the act of pollination, where the flower „captures“ the pollinator, and vice versa.

WAUHAUS is a Helsinki-based multidisciplinary arts collective. The collective’s works are situated between different genres of art and they take place at various venues, such as small black box theatres, urban sites, large stadiums, and the main stages of established theatre houses. The members of WAUHAUS are scenographer Laura Haapakangas, director Juni Klein, scenographer Samuli Laine, sound designer Jussi Matikainen, choreographer Jarkko Partanen, sound designer Heidi Soidinsalo, producer Minttu-Maria Jäävuori and managing director Julia Hovi.

In Some Unexpected Remnants, WAUHAUS examines the temporal and material legacy of waste. The video piece lingers over Vuosaarenhuippu, a former landfill transformed into recreational land, and an active waste center in Kuopio. Through this slow, observational approach, they meditate on the lifespans of materials that society attempts to forget- landfills that outlive us, matter that never fully disappears, offering quiet, lingering engagement with entropy and renewal. The performance-based origins of the video are evident in its choreography of machines and landscapes, emphasizing the entanglement of natural and artificial rhythms. Their piece becomes a poetic artifact of slow decay and adaptation, showing how waste, like memory and land, breathes and mutates in silence.