Plants as Recording Devices — an Interview with Hildur Bjarnadóttir byJulie Lænkholm

I am calling Hildur at her home an hour south of Reykjavík where she lives with her family. I am sitting in my studio in Copenhagen’s Refshaleøen, surrounded by Icelandic wool.

JL: Tell me about the piece of land you moved to with your family, and its relationship to your work? HB: Since 2013 I have been working actively with a small piece of land in the South of Iceland, Þúfugarðar, which I moved to in 2016. For some years now, plants have been one of the main topics and materials in my work. Plants function as recording devices in the place they grow in; they contain the specific social and ecological context of the place. They take in information through their leaves, flowers, and roots. Everything that happens in that place becomes a part of the plant. These are common plants such as water avens, garden angelica, wild thyme, dwarf willow, crowberry, northern bedstraw, and reindeer moss. I extract colour from the plants and thus carry this information further into wool thread, silk fabric, and watercolours that I use in my work. I use the plants that grow at Þúfugarðar: the work 120

speaks about this place, its inhabitants, human beings, animals, and plants. The work also speaks to its ecological condition in a more global sense: how human beings are influencing it both from nearby and far away.

JL: What does colour mean to you? HB: Colour in my work is a material— the appearance of the colour itself is less important than the information it carries within it. When I use plants to produce colour I never reject a shade, I always use the one it procures because it contains the place, and in that sense, all colours are equally important, even if they are very faint or yet another hue of yellow. I see the acrylic paint as an additional material that brings painting into the equation. In some sense the acrylic paint grounds the work—using only plant colour seems idyllic and sublime, but using both acrylic paint and plant colour facilitates a dialogue between the two elements and creates a platform for them to co-exist.

JL: What does the term coexistence mean to you? HB: Since 2013, Þúfugarðar has brought forward questions to me about the coexistence of humans, animals, and plants. It also raises the question of symbio- sis. The term can take on differ- ent meanings, both positive and negative. It is used to describe the cohabitation of different life forms living in close proximity in the same place. By definition, such a relationship can be either a parasitic or a collaborative re- lationship. Living in Þúfugarðar I have noticed a common snipe bird flying in circles over my land, signalling to other birds where it will lay its nest. Birds are creatures of habit and return again and again to the same place to lay their eggs and raise their young. This bird and I both claim this piece of land as our home, but through different systems: me through ownership and the bird through habit.

JL: What is your relationship to the Icelandic myth of ‘spirits of the land’? HB: My work is not very spiritual, although using plants offers ample opportunities for working with their mystical abil- ities and myths. In my work the information in the plant colour is real, it’s not a metaphor for na- ture or the place it comes from. It literally contains the place I am working with. The work is quite pragmatic in that sense.

JL: Do you want to share some thoughts about your woven paintings? HB: My works explore vari- ations, changes, balance, com- promises, repetition, adaption, friction, chaos, and nuances in the cohabitation of human be- ings, animals, and plants through a natural and manmade system of colour. ◻