WINGSPAN

Sigrun Gunnarsdóttir addresses the small and big questions of life in thought-provoking works where a colourful, naïve idiom goes hand in hand with surreal symbolism and an unfailingly poetic presence.

8 June—22 September 2024

The Faroese painter Sigrun Gunnarsdóttir is a storyteller at heart. Her works are about home, about longing, about presence, about looking for the key to locked rooms, about faith as one’s foundation, about grief and care. Often, the perspective in her art is that of the child, and a sense of caring for those who have newly entered the world permeates Gunnarsdóttir’s work.

Indeed, it was a pressing need to tell stories that prompted Gunnarsdóttir to abandon concrete observations of the world in favour of the naïve and Surrealist idiom she has been practicing since the 1990s. In her painterly world, big things become small and vice versa, and her works are filled with a regularly recurring array of symbols such as the sparrow, the key, the lily, the door and the angel.

Sigrun Gunnarsdóttir was born in 1950 in Eiði on the Faroe Islands, where she still lives and works. She is a graduate from The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, having studied there in 1973–1980 under professor Sven Dalsgaard. She has presented countless exhibitions in her native Faroe Islands and abroad.

In 2023, her artistic endeavours were the subject of Marianna Mørkøre and Beinta á Torkilsheyggi’s award-winning portrait film Heartist, which is included in the exhibition.

The exhibition is supported by the Danish Arts Foundation