Gunnhildur Hauksdóttir

Gunnhildur Hauksdóttir is a visual artist from Iceland. She received her MFA from the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam in 2006 and her BFA from the Iceland University of the Arts in 2002. Hauksdóttir’s works include drawings, installations, and performances. She uses drawing as an intermedium to sound, choirs being her vessel of choice. She leans on science, events in nature, or animals, to form the base of her visual and aural compositions. Her works and performances have been exhibited and performed widely throughout her career. Hauksdóttir took part in the Silver Lining, Collateral Event at the 56th Biennale di Venezia in 2015. Among the institutions that have displayed her works are the National Gallery of Iceland, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Uppsala Art Museum in Sweden, Galeria Municipal do Porto, Reykjavik Art Museum, and the 21 Haus at the Belvedere Museum in Vienna. Her works are found in permanent collections including those of Iceland’s National Gallery of Art, Uppsala Art Museum, the Goethe Institute in Copenhagen, the Hess Collection in Lethbridge, Canada and the Living Art Museum in Reykjavik.
Doreen Kutzke, born in the dark forests of the Harz Mountains, grew up in the GDR, is a multidisciplinary musician and composer from Berlin. Since her childhood she has been involved in musical projects, the main characteristic of which is her voice. She founded the Jodelschule Kreuzberg, travels worldwide to teach yodeling and advanced vocal techniques in New York, Bordeaux, Paris, Oslo, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Reykjavik, Prague, London and Los Angeles ect. The Guardian, BBC, ARTE TV and several German television stations regularly accompany her on her musical travels.

Event Showings

December 7, 2024

Gallery

Extended Bio

2021

By Gunnhildur Hauksdóttir

Remix by Doreen Kutzke

Animation in collaboration with Cormac Walsh

Vocalists from the Hrynjandi Choir in Reykjavik

Rats make sixteen different sounds to express happiness in a frequency undetectable by the human ear. They name each other and play social games according to rules which they express with sounds, as their existence is mostly lived in darkness. Hauksdóttir created a score for human voices based on the rats’ social dynamics, sonographic images* of rat sounds and human phonetics, thus assembling the Rat Choir.

The Reykjavik based choir Hrynjandi decoded the voices of the rats in Kjarvalsstaðir, Reykjavik Art Museum, as a live performance for the premiere in 2020.

Composer Doreen Kutzke reimagined the composition in 2021 and created the remix. The drawings have been specially animated for the Remix in collaboration with Cormac Walsh, with the drawings dancing and jumping in step with the music for the display at Gallery Happy Hour.

*The sonographic images that form the base of the original composition come from lab rats from the University of Lethbridge, the lab of Professor Sergio Pellis (Animal behaviour and behavioural neuroscience).