What do we share when we speak? What does it mean to be human? How does language shape our understanding of the world, of our reality and of ourselves?

These questions are fundamental to Jóna Hlíf Halldórsdóttir’s research into how meaning manifests across different languages. To this end, she explores the creative power of language – its ability to connect us, to express emotions and to fall silent – while probing whether universal concepts can flow from one language and culture to another, transcending linguistic and cultural divides. Or whether meaning is ultimately bound by certain limits.

In Universality, Jóna Hlíf Halldórsdóttir works with the interplay of text and imagery, where visuals and written language merge and the boundaries between the local and the universal blur; walls become pages, objects become phrases. By weaving together insights from linguistics, artificial intelligence and philosophy, the artist creates a space where the viewer is invited to consider the fragility of meaning and the essential human drive to connect with one another. The exhibition thus becomes a meditation on the translatability of words and concepts, as well as the human experience, as communicated through the system of language. Underlying it all is a focus on the concept of “human experience” and its inextricable connection to the broader phenomenon of life itself.

A living, breathing language is vast, yet finite, constantly evolving and leaving gaps as it expands into new directions. In this way, language is a reflection of the universe itself, mirroring our attempts to map both the infinite and the intimate. With each disappearing language, a worldview vanishes, taking with it the unique ways of naming, knowing and being. Thus, language contains the paradox and struggle of human existence, fleeting as it is: Can we ever truly grasp the universal? Or is our understanding – universal meaning – destined to be fractured, scattered across the many ways in which humans make sense of their worlds?