“This exhibition is a direct continuation of Nothing Left But the Softness, which I presented at the Akureyri Art Museum at the end of August last year,” says Fríða. “This time, I’m working directly with various myths and rumors, translating them onto canvas through my own interpretation. Every time a story is told, a new storyteller gives it a different texture. The story constantly changes—becoming longer, shorter, more frightening, or gentler each time it’s retold. Different parts get exaggerated and distorted, until the last storyteller is left with a messy stew of tangled tales.”

Fríða Karlsdóttir graduated from the Fine Arts Program at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 2020. She lives and works in Akureyri, where she is part of the independent art collective Kaktus, which hosts various cultural activities in the Ketilhús space on the lower floor of the Akureyri Art Museum.

Fríða works with folklore and storytelling through mixed media, including video, sculpture, text-based works, and various types of craft. Her pieces often resemble natural phenomena, feature strong symbolic imagery, and dramatize everyday life while expressing sincere personal experiences. She has exhibited both in Iceland and abroad, and in March she concluded her solo exhibition Nothing Left But the Softness at the Akureyri Art Museum.