Meet Asgerdur Ása” Arnardottir | artist”

We had the good fortune of connecting with Asgerdur “Ása” Arnardottir and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Asgerdur “Ása”, any advice for those thinking about whether to keep going or to give up?
I’ve actually been thinking about this a lot. I get this voice in my head oftentimes that wants to give up and that is mainly because I tell myself it would be safer for me financially to choose another career path. Then I sit down and listen to that voice and try to answer it. Thats when I realize it is not necessarily safer for me to give up on what I am doing. The thing is, I have been dedicating so much of myself into my art making that I’m kind of “trapped” in this world at this point, so in a way, it is safer for me to stay in it sometimes. I wouldn’t even know where to go or look if I would give up my art, I’d be lost and feeling unsatisfied and my body would ultimately feel unsafe. So, when it comes down to it, giving up is not as easy as its sounds.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I center my interdisciplinary art practice in world-building, site-specific installations featuring concepts of poetics, multiplicity, and transcending the written language’s limits in dialogue with visual language. I incorporate and combine many digital and analog mediums including photography, video, poetry, printing on metals and fabrics, sound, painting, drawing, sculpture, fashion, welding and performance. The focus is most often based on spatial experiences and a play with the bodily senses. I am interested in how the body reacts in a physical space and how its different sensory systems are our tools of understanding the environment around us – I want to reshuffle people’s senses to create shifts of perspectives. Geometrical psychology, the idea that our geographical environment strongly affects our persona and emotions, is an ideology I constantly seek to explore and offer in my works.

It’s almost like a healing practice that I go through when creating my installations and something I want the audience to experience and open their eyes up to. it’s about thinking with the body more than the mind, but not escaping the mind. Maybe it’s about expanding the mind into the body. The body and the mind do rely on one another and what happens if we perceive it as one eternity rather than two separate ones?

My practice is also about ways of understanding and constantly creating new worlds with a visual language that’s slightly different each time. Can materiality speak? How do we understand things through placement of material objects/entities in a physical space? It’s continually about the idea of a language and stretching it further than the written language. I don’t escape the written language even though I am interested in materialistic and abstract language, I think it’s crucial for me to invite the written language to form a dialogue between the visual and the academic. It’s about creating multiple meanings for the written language and expanding its meaning further than as we understand now. Language is ever changing and thinking of it as fluid and not static is important to me and my practice.

To get to where I am professionally was not easy and isn’t meant to be easy. Some days I have to fight the urge to give up completely and choose another career. I mainly get those ideas when I am tired because, as an artist, you put in so much work and it’s hard to notice the outcome, until years later maybe. Its hard to see your growth and success because changes are made very slowly and gradually. If I feel like I don’t have a lot to offer one day, I have to keep going and remind myself that every single detail affects the big picture in the future.

The lesson I’ve learned along the way is not to rush things and think quality over quantity. It can be extremely hard to think like that in a world that seems to be moving faster everyday and to get a hold of that rhythm. I try to put my best focus and intention into my making each time, I listen to my body, I work from my body and I think from my body. To get to where I am professionally has required a lot of patience and the ability to make the small details feel big and nurturing. We are always learning more than we think, our bodies are gathering complex and detailed information that our mind is unable to comprehend.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Get Chilaquiles first thing in the morning. Either at MexCocina in Burbank or at my local coffee house, Main Kitchen. For an evening activity I’d take them to art shows or concerts, I can’t necessarily think of any specific venue in the city that is my favorite, it’s more about the events that are going on, and usually my favorite events are the ones hosted by my friends!

Driving around LA and finding sunset spots and taking a hike is something I’d like to explore with them. And then drive out of LA, camp somewhere in the desert and watch the sunrise in the morning. I know nothing better than waking up in the middle of the desert. It is so healing to me and the vast landscape, dryness and stillness soothes and makes me feel at ease, the nature surrounding Los Angeles is extremely captivating. I find it to be the most exciting thing about living here. Noah Purifoy’s installation in Joshua Tree is also something on the top of the list. And, of course, Joshua Tree national park is a crucial destination.

Being born and raised in Iceland, where the weather is very chaotic and diverse, I do appreciate the serenity of the weather here in California. It is the opposite climate of Iceland’s but I will say that the nature here, the mountains and the vastness, hot springs, lack of trees, all reminds me of home. So, being here feels familiar but polar opposite simultaneously and I guess that’s what excites me.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I want to give a huge shout out to all the people I met during my studies at CalArts (California Institute of the Arts..) There are so many that It would take me a while to list all of them, I’m talking students and the faculty. I am very thankful to have met them. The time at CalArts has been intense and busy but it has given me so much to work from, I will cherish these years forever. I also want to give a special shout out to my dance teacher from back home in Iceland, Rosana. Dancing with her helped me connect to my body and that I am grateful for as thinking with my body has done wonders for my art practice. Also, shout out to all the yoga teachers that have offered their classes throughout the years I’ve practiced yoga – I wouldn’t have the tools to connect with my body hadn’t I been practicing these two activities mentioned.

Website: www.asaarnar.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/asa__arnar

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/asgerdur-arnardottir-b56897274/

Image Credits
Photo credits: Zoey Moon