Anna Maggý: Myndleysa / Non-Image I Þula
“I often find myself more drawn to the process than to the final image, and that’s part of what fascinates me. I let go.”
In this exhibition, Anna Maggý approaches photography differently than usual. Instead of beginning with predetermined subjects, she creates through a process shaped by light and material, allowing their organic interplay to guide the work.
“I let the light, the material, and time lead me forward,” she says.
Unlike her previous digital work, Anna now experiments with analogue photographic chemistry, embracing unpredictability and even destruction — in hopes that something unexpected and magical might emerge.
“Maybe I have some kind of urge to destroy — something that breaks through in the work,” she reflects.
Sometimes something beautiful comes out of the destruction, sometimes not. “I often find myself more drawn to the process than to the final image, and that’s part of what fascinates me. I let go.”
Control and surrender are at the core of the process. Rather than dictating the outcome, she invites the image to become — to evolve, dissolve, and shift with time. Sometimes the photographs decay completely. Perhaps that’s the thread running through the work. Are these all images of nothing?
The results can appear as if they show very little. “But for me, it’s not about revealing what already exists — it’s about allowing something to come into being.”
This theme touches on fundamental ideas in physics — interactions of matter, relationships to energy, time, and space. If we zoom as far inward as possible, into the deepest layers of the material world, some scientists argue that nothing is — things simply happen.
As the Italian theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli puts it: Nothing is, things happen. Things are not fixed entities, but events.
This way of thinking clashes with our human perception — like the eye of the camera, our vision only captures the fixed surfaces of the world.
Text by Anna Gyða.
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Anna Maggý (b. 1995) is a photographer and director based in Reykjavík. Her multifaceted practice explores materiality, social constructs, and their boundaries. Working with photography, video, collage, and installation, Anna examines the intersection of reality and dream, the tangible and the intangible, often framing her work through the lens of the subconscious.
She studied at the Reykjavík School of Photography from 2015 to 2018. Since then, her visual storytelling has evolved through an experimental and intuitive approach that challenges perception and explores the nature of reality.
Recent exhibitions include Ár-farvegur at Þula, Reykjavík (2024), Avoiding Death and Birth at Þula (2022–23), and Urgent Experiments on Reality at Ásmundarsalur (2022). Other notable shows include On Display at the Living Art Museum (2022), CAN I BORROW YOUR EYES at Flak, Patreksfjörður (2021), and The Perfect Body at Þula (2021).
Her work has been exhibited at international art fairs including CHART Art Fair in Copenhagen (2023), Los Angeles Art Show (2023), and Market Art Fair in Stockholm (2025). Anna’s work has received international attention and been featured in Vogue Italia, British Vogue, Dazed and Confused, Another Magazine, i-D Magazine, among others.
