Textiles in the extended field of painting

Reconstructing the painter’s canvas both conceptually and literally through weaving. Using plants as a source of pigment in connection to a place or a person.

The artistic research project Textiles in the extended field of painting uses the methods of textiles and painting to explore the meaning of two different colorants, acrylic paint and plant pigment. Hildur Bjarnadóttir weaves together these two different types of pigment, creating a dialogue between an industrially made color system and a natural system of color. Using these two different substances together in woven paintings expands their presence and sharpens their characteristics creating a situation where they exist on an equal basis. Hildur uses the colorants as a medium, emphasizing the context and content they bring with them.

Acrylic paint, unlike the plant color is industrially produced, a standardized color system wheras the natural colors have roots in a certain place. Plants act as recording devices of the place they grow in and the ecological and social system they belong to, collecting information through the soil and the air, as well as their roots, petals, flowers and leaves. This information is passed on into the colors Hildur extracts from the plants and has used in her research project. The site-specific content of the color has great importance to the work. The plants come from a specific piece of land in the south of Iceland which Hildur recently acquired. The research project takes this place as a point of departure, it functions as a platform to contemplate issues of belonging and ecological disruption. These themes of color as material with reference to history, origin and place, and of belonging are the main topics of her research.  

Read Bjarnadóttir`s reflection here.

Hildur Bjarnadóttir (b. 1969) lives and works in Reykjavík and Flóahreppur in the south of Iceland. She graduated from the textile department of The Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts in 1992 and finished her MFA degree from the fine arts department at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York in 1997. Hildur has held many solo exhibitions all over the world, including Colors of Belonging in Bergen Kjøtt in Norway, 2015; Subjective Systems in Kunstnerforbundet in Oslo and Mapping a Piece of Land in Hverfisgallery, 2014; Flora of Weeds in Hallgrímskirkja, Reykjavík, 2013; Coherence in Hafnarborg, Hafnarfjörður, 2011 and Encircling in The Pollock Gallery, Southern Methodist University in Texas, USA, 2008. Hildur is currently associate professor at the MA department of the Iceland Academy of Arts in Reykjavík.