Motivational Award 2018: Auður Lóa Guðnadóttir

Auður Lóa Guðnadóttir is a young artist who made a name for herself with a few exhibitions last year. Auður Lóa‘s works are a fresh wind on the scene. They display imagination and skill to work with both art historical references and popular culture. She uses innovative methods and approaches her subjects with playfulness, humour, and positivity. Auður Lóa is adept at tackling contemporary issues and connecting them to ancient myths and legends.

In organising the group installation/exhibition Diana Forever, which combined play and a reasoned approach, Auður Lóa merged social collective awareness and the strong communal empathy with a modern legend. Her solo exhibition Legends in Pláss home-gallery showed without a doubt that she has a solid grasp of Western culture that she expresses with roughly shaped miniature sculptures. People and animals, painted in bright colours refer to the history of both high-brow and low-brow Western culture. IN this way, Auður Lóa manages to break down the mechanical dualism of Western culture. Boundaries of distinction are blurred and the statuette, the domestic ornament, is elevated to the pedestal of art. Auður Lóa demonstrates audacity by taking this girly ornament, the statuette, and presenting it as a certified work of art.

The panel believes that Auður Lóa Guðnadóttir is more than deserving of the Motivational Award of the year. She has shown that she is unafraid of mining source material in unexpected places and interpreting her subject with intuition and ingenuity. All her work and presentation radiate warmth and promise of continued imagination, and an unusual outlook on life. Therefore, the panel would like to encourage Auður Lóa to continue to create in her own unique way.