Who are your People?

The National Gallery of Iceland holds a retrospective of the work of Hulda Hákon, whose career in art spans nearly forty years. Hulda soon established a special place for herself in Icelandic art history, with respect to both media and imagery. Most of her works are reliefs, and her earliest pieces were made with scraps of timber. The reliefs were seen as an innovative addition to the flora of neo-expressionism, and an unexpected riposte to the wildness that typified the work of young artists in the early 1980s. 

Hulda has always scrutinised her environment and society with critical eyes, and environmentalism, consumerism and customs of communication are the principal themes of her art. She seeks inspiration in the Icelandic narrative tradition, and in her works she stages scenes of heroes, people, animals and various situations which may be specifically Icelandic or simply human. Into her narratives she inserts messages, ambiguous texts which add another layer of meaning.  

Hulda Hákon was born in Reykjavík in 1956. After graduation from the Tjörn High School she studied at the New Media Department of the Icelandic School of Arts and Crafts (forerunner of the Iceland University of the Arts). She then went to New York for further study at the School of Visual Arts, after which she returned to Iceland in 1985. Works by Hulda are in many collections, including Iceland‘s leading art museums, the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, the Malmö Art Museum in Sweden, and private collections around the world.  

The works in the exhibition span Hulda‘s entire career, from 1983 to 2019. In addition the National Gallery shows a video interview with the artist, made in connection with this exhibition.