New Visual Arts Council Appointed 2025-2028

Icelandic visual artists, or artists with a significant connection to the Icelandic art scene, can apply for a funded one-year residency in Berlin. The residency period is May 1, 2026 – April 15, 2027.

The twelfth edition of the Sequences Biennial, Sequences XII: Pause, will take place from 10 to 20 October 2025 in Reykjavík.

This year, the festival brings together a wide-ranging group of Icelandic and international artists whose work explores slowness in both artistic practice and audience experience.

Curated by Daría Sól Andrews, Sequences XII invites visitors to step away from the rush of daily life and immerse themselves in ten days of exhibitions, performances, lectures, guided walks, and more. The festival is an open invitation to pause, reflect, and experience art at a different rhythm, making space for attention, meditation, and sustained engagement.

“This iteration of Sequences will provide an invitation to slow ourselves. Everything about our current existence urges us forward. "Pause" offers space for reflection, attention, and a reorientation of pace , inviting us to resist the pressure to accelerate and instead settle into a different rhythm. As we slow the brakes, look at what we can find: the dedication of an attentive practice, the meditative healing of works that call to our hands and tactile senses; the sensory immersion of works that demand our full, quiet, attention. Exhibitions will focus on artistic practices that engage duration, repetition, listening, and intimacy —making space for the quiet power of sustained attention,” says curator Daría Sól Andrews.

Three main exhibitions anchor the programme, each offering a unique perspective on time: Experiential Time, focusing on time-based, experiential works and installations that invite us to experience slowly, and encourage quiet contemplation; Political Time, exploring art that considers the lived experience and politics of time, especially as it relates to marginalized communities and histories; and Natural Time, presenting works that reveal the tempo of non-human life, from microscopic growth to geological change, and invite us to see time on a scale far beyond our own. Audiences can also look forward to performances, artist talks, and screenings throughout Reykjavík and the surrounding landscape, with opportunities to slow down, listen, and connect. Mark your calendars for 10–20 October 2025 and join us for Sequences XII: Pause, a celebration of contemporary art, reflection, and shared experience in Iceland.

The full list of participating artists and the detailed programme will be announced later this year.

The visual artist Sæmundur Þór Helgason has been selected from a pool of applicants for a residency at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York in the summer of 2026. The residency spans three months and is funded by the Icelandic Visual Arts Council.