Auður Lóa Guðnadóttir: Í rósrauðum bjarma / In Watermelon Sugar

Auður Lóa Guðnadóttir (b. 1993) lives and works in Reykjavík. She is an artist who explores the boundaries between the subjective and the objective, sculpture and drawing, art and reality. Her subjects are everyday objects and figurative imagery, drawing from both ancient and recent history. Auður Lóa aims to activate the artworks themselves, always considering them as phenomena within their own social context. Auður Lóa focuses on painted papier-mâché sculptures, and this rough and unruly material gives her work a humorous and distinctive character. By using this seemingly lightweight medium, she achieves unexpected depth and offers an unconventional perspective on her subjects.

Auður Lóa graduated from the Fine Arts Department of the Iceland University of the Arts in 2015. Since then, she has worked independently, collaborated with other artists, and participated in exhibitions such as Leikfimi at The Icelandic Folk and Outsider Art Museum, Djúpþrýstingur at the Living Art Museum, and Allt á sama tíma at Hafnarborg. She received the Visual Arts Council’s Encouragement Award in 2018 for her involvement in and curating of the exhibition Diana, Forever. In spring 2021, she opened her first major solo exhibition, Yes / No, in D salur of the Reykjavík Art Museum, which featured over 100 papier-mâché sculptures. Auður Lóa’s works were on view at CHART Art Fair in Copenhagen in 2023. Her recent solo exhibitions include Forvera at the Akureyri Art Museum, Be Mine at Þula in 2022 and Í lausu lofti at Gallerí Úthverfa.

 

“I often tell this story, but I always make sure to change it a bit, say that it was my male cousin and not my female cousin for whom I was house-sitting and taking care of the cats. Because of her, I also switched Kópavogur out for Laugardalur. The tulips, however, are always tulips. When I tell this to people I don’t know particularly well, I change my ex into a friend whom I invited over for dinner, and the underwear becomes a hat or a cap. These are just little details that don’t really matter for the story.

Maybe a week passed from when she got back from Cyprus until I finally called her. When I had finished telling her about this, she very kindly asked me not to spread it all over town. And I understand that and why she’s still upset about it. I wouldn’t want people to always think about something like this when they sat down on the living room sofa at my place. Not at all. But to me, this isn’t just a story about Remi and Leo; it’s also a sneakily philosophical story about indoor cats and outward-facing windows. And how you treat your guests.”

- Written by Sölvi Halldórsson