Vala Sigþrúðar Jónsdóttir

Tracks for Tendrils

21.01.2023 to 05.03.2023

The project Tracks for Tendrils by Vala Sigþrúðar Jónsdóttir was realized with the support of Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, with contributions by Ingunn Hildur Hauksdóttir and hexhexhex (Rebecca Scott Lord and Aron Ásgerðarson), Silja Aðalsteinsdóttir and Ragnheiður Sveinbjörnsdóttir (Rarra). With special thanks to Agnes Ársælsdóttir.

Closed performances for musicians in the form of a TV dinner (21.11.2022 & ongoing) Tóma rýmið, Reykjavík are curated by Agnes Ársælsdóttir.

Exhibition Text

Agnes Ársælsdóttir, Dee Hehewerth, Silja Jónsdóttir, Tim Mathijsen, Vala Sigþrúðar Jónsdóttir

A beamer purrs under a table. The glow of the video lights up our faces. Five mouths individually explore a bite of the same legume pie. Their tongues translate what the eyes see on the screen in- between chewing. A swaying bird vetch wraps around another on the screen while our tongues glide across the mouth.

Tóma rýmið, Reykjavik, 21 November 2022
Agnes Ársælsdóttir

One thread of Tracks for Tendrils was a dinner/workshop that took place in Reykjavík, in which the video of the bird vetch was shown to musicians Ingunn Hildur Hauksdóttir and members of the band hexhexhex. In response to the video, each musician improvised a soundtrack. Together, these tracks aim to explode subjective positions, composing as many subjectivities as possible, as opposed to trying to find a single objective truth.

Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, 28 November 2022
Dee Hehewerth

“The exhibition at Marwan will hold an installation consisting of a video of the tendrils, sound recordings of a conversation between the musicians watching videos of the tendrils, and three separate soundtracks for the plant. The textiles are woven with overspun yarn that will twist
over time, reacting to heat, light, moisture and vibrations made by various actors in Marwan’s environment. The textile is coloured with dye from the plant that will fade over time, making the textiles mirror the slow movement and changes of the tendrils.”

AFK Offices, Amsterdam, 13 December 2022
Vala Sigþrúðar Jónsdóttir

At a first glance the work looks like an excerpt from a nature documentary that shows the movement and growth of plants. It can be seen as an animation to focus in on the behaviour of plants by speeding up a process. At a first glance it seems like that’s what it is, this thing that we know. But because we know this format from nature documentaries—and only because of this knowledge—we can start to see this video as a proposition or an essay (an attempt to look into the subject).
Because we know the form, we can focus on the dance, the interaction, the formal inquiries in the movements of this plant. The formal composure of the video leads me to think about what the plant does, how it acts, how it is an actor in its environment, how it is an actor in the video.

Amsterdam, 13 January, 2023
Tim Mathijsen

The tendrils of the bird vetch only grab on to other plants—she knows what is what and she knows what she wants. The textiles are searching for their right form—a relaxed state, a balance. We lean our head to the side, squint our eyes for the balanced composition to reveal itself. Everything needs to be moved up and down, side-to-side more than once to be able to land on the right spot. It takes the plants time to find each other, they feel around by moving. I become aware of how the level of humidity, the temperature and the slight gusts of wind as we move around in the space are affecting the hairs on our bodies, the folds of our clothes. A tensing and unwinding. How tensing up makes unwinding possible and vice versa. How more than one thing can be true at the same time.

Marwan, Amsterdam, 20 January 2023
Silja Jónsdóttir

download as pdf

Shows Archive