Katrín Sigurdardóttir

Katrín Sigurdardóttir’s sculptural practice examines the way physical structures and boundaries affect perception. Her works gesture towards real locations, employing shifts in scale and fragmentation to systematically question the veracity of both memory and history. Sigurdardóttir’s exhibition at the MIT List Visual Arts Center will consist of two bodies of work recently completed as part of the commission for this project. The objects in the series Ellefu–Eleven in Icelandic–are abstracted, miniaturized constructions of interior segments of the artist’s childhood home in Reykjavík. For each of these floor-bound sculptures, the artist methodically regenerates cross-sections of rooms and passageways, their surfaces rendered without evidence of personal history. For the series Unbuilt Residences in Reykjavík, 1925-1930, Sigurdardóttir uses unrealized architectural drafts of houses to create models that are then destroyed by various means only to be reconstructed from the remains. The partially eroded structures evince a history simulated through a process as rehearsed and anticipated as it is left to chance.

About the Artist

Katrín Sigurdardóttir (born 1967, Reykjavík, Iceland) lives and works in New York City.  She represented Iceland in the 55th Venice Biennial in 2013. Recent solo exhibitions include SculptureCenter, New York; Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Renaissance Society, Chicago; S.M.A.K. Museum of Contemporary Art, Ghent, Belgium; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, Mexico City; and FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon, France. 

Katrín Sigurdardóttir: Drawing Apart is curated by Jeffrey De Blois, Curatorial Fellow, and Paul C. Ha, Director, MIT List Visual Arts Center.