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Sequences XII: Pause

The twelfth edition of the Sequences Biennial, Sequences XII: Pause, will take place from 10 to 20 October 2025 in Reykjavík.

This year, the festival brings together a wide-ranging group of Icelandic and international artists whose work explores slowness in both artistic practice and audience experience.

Curated by Daría Sól Andrews, Sequences XII invites visitors to step away from the rush of daily life and immerse themselves in ten days of exhibitions, performances, lectures, guided walks, and more. The festival is an open invitation to pause, reflect, and experience art at a different rhythm, making space for attention, meditation, and sustained engagement.

“This iteration of Sequences will provide an invitation to slow ourselves. Everything about our current existence urges us forward. "Pause" offers space for reflection, attention, and a reorientation of pace , inviting us to resist the pressure to accelerate and instead settle into a different rhythm. As we slow the brakes, look at what we can find: the dedication of an attentive practice, the meditative healing of works that call to our hands and tactile senses; the sensory immersion of works that demand our full, quiet, attention. Exhibitions will focus on artistic practices that engage duration, repetition, listening, and intimacy —making space for the quiet power of sustained attention,” says curator Daría Sól Andrews.

Three main exhibitions anchor the programme, each offering a unique perspective on time: Experiential Time, focusing on time-based, experiential works and installations that invite us to experience slowly, and encourage quiet contemplation; Political Time, exploring art that considers the lived experience and politics of time, especially as it relates to marginalized communities and histories; and Natural Time, presenting works that reveal the tempo of non-human life, from microscopic growth to geological change, and invite us to see time on a scale far beyond our own. Audiences can also look forward to performances, artist talks, and screenings throughout Reykjavík and the surrounding landscape, with opportunities to slow down, listen, and connect. Mark your calendars for 10–20 October 2025 and join us for Sequences XII: Pause, a celebration of contemporary art, reflection, and shared experience in Iceland.

The full list of participating artists and the detailed programme will be announced later this year.

News
ISCP-2024

Open Call for ISCP Residency in New York

The Icelandic Art Center is pleased to announce an open call for applications for a three-month studio residency at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York. The residency will take place from June – August 2026.


The program offers a spacious private studio that the artist has 24-hour access to. The institution organizes regular studio visits by curators, art professionals, visits to museums, galleries, and exhibition spaces, as well as lectures.

The residency at ISCP provides a strong international network, whether it involves international artists and curators, museum professionals, journalists, or others working within the field.

The grant is intended for the studio residency, not for living expenses. The grant is funded by the Visual Arts Council.

The preliminary selection of applications will be handled by the Visual Arts Council, while the final selection is made by the ISCP’s professional committee. The application deadline is May 19, 2025. You can apply here.

Please submit the following documents with your application:

CV, maximum 5 pages

10 photographs of works or links to videos. Please include the title, year, medium, and size or length of each work. Additionally, a short text describing the work may be included.

If applicable, you may submit copies of articles or reviews, maximum 10 pages

If applicable, you may submit 2-3 copies of exhibition catalogs or published material

A letter of recommendation

An additional open call will be issued in March 2026 for the year 2027.

News
Gestavinnustofa í Rennes í Frakklandi

Residency in France

CALL FOR PROJECTS - 9th Edition of the Photographic Encounters of ViaSilva 

Les Rencontres Photographiques de ViaSilva - “the ViaSilva Photographic Encounters” - is an artistic initiative created in 2016 and organized by the association Les Ailes de Caïus, the public urban planning company SPLA ViaSilva, and the publishing house Les Editions de Juillet.

Its purpose is to annually invite photographers to participate in residencies within the ViaSilva area, a neighborhood under construction on the outskirts of Rennes, Brittany. This land, historically agricultural, is now rapidly transforming and urbanizing, exemplifying the global phenomenon of expanding metropolitan regions across the world.

At the end of their exploratory stage, they exhibit their work in various Breton venues : the Net Plus Gallery, metro stations, city parks, and several regional train stations. Some of them are determined by the current and annually evolving partnership agreements. These exhibitions are accompanied by the publication of a monograph in collaboration with Les Editions de Juillet.

In 2025 (year of residency) and 2026 (year of presentation), the association Les Ailes de Caïus, which oversees the project, plans to collaborate with Arctic Lab and ArtsIceland to offer the long-term residency (ON edition of 2026) to an Icelandic artist.

Following a review of the candidates' personal work and backgrounds, the jury - consisting of representatives from the three organizing organizations - will carefully consider projects that could complement the artistic proposals presented in the ViaSilva area over the past 8 years.

KEY INFORMATION :

• Application deadline : was 15th of March 2025 ; now extended to 25th of March 2025!

• Residency of at least a month between May and July 2025 ; 

• Exhibition and publication between June and August 2026 ; 

• The laureate will be granted free accommodation and transportation, a residency budget of €5000 and access to an electric bike on-site ; 

• Proficiency in French is not mandatory but appreciated, as the artist must be able to work independently during their residency. A certain level of proficiency in English is essential.

MORE DETAILED INFORMATION CAN BE FOUND ON THE ONLINE APPLICATION FORM:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScNd7ayBPBbRVDRiJxQZA1ikzkrKxpHYAxZYo1QV-1v2k64-Q/viewform

Please contact Cécile for any information:  cecile.lombardie@ailesdecaius.fr

Open Calls
Margrét Bjarnadóttir - CHART 2024

Artists from Iceland at CHART 2024

The Nordic Art Fair CHART will take place from 29 August — 01 September, with a VIP preview on 29 August, at Charlottenborg in the heart of Copenhagen by Kongens Nytorv. Three Icelandic galleries will take part in the art fair along with many artists. CHART 2024 will focus on bringing established, internationally-renowned artists in the Nordics, together with the next generation of rising stars.



BERG Contemporary presents two artists of different generations and media, John Zurier and Þórdís Erla Zoëga.



i8’s presentation at Chart 2024 features artworks by established artists associated with the gallery’s history. The exhibition showcases important works from each artist’s respective practice spanning several decades, as well as more recent creations.

The artists are Birgir Andrésson, Ingólfur Arnarsson, Ólafur Elíasson, Hreinn Friðfinnsson, Kristján Guðmundsson, Sigurður Guðmundsson, Roni Horn, Callum Innes, Ragnar Kjartansson, Ragna Róbertsdóttir, Karin Sander, Lawrence Weiner.



The art fair partners with Louisiana Channel and screens a number of video interviews recorded with artists exhibiting at CHART 2024, such as Ragnar Kjartansson, Roni Horn, Karin Sander and Sigurður Guðmundsson.



Þula will exhibit a duo presentation by two artists: Áslaug Íris Katrín Friðjónsdóttir and Davíð Örn Halldórsson. Both artists approach their work with fluent abstract forms.

For the Performance Programme at CHART 2024, Margrét Bjarnadóttir will perform ‘PEOPLE PLEASE.’ During the performance, a group of people will walk around Kongens Nytorv with protest signs that have text pieces by the artist written on them. Unlike protest signs which normally aim to be clear and direct and not open to misunderstanding, here, the messages are deliberately left open and ambiguous.

Articles & Interviews
Iva LULASHI, Qualunque sia il suo nome (Whatever his name is), 2021, Albanian Pavilion

A haunted house, being homesick & medieval execution methods

As of today, I have been living in Venice, Italy for 17 weeks and 2 days. Ironically, This city which far from exudes home-like energy, has become my home. When I left Iceland in April, I moved out of my apartment in Hlíðar where I lived for the past 5 years. It's incredible how much stuff you can accumulate in 5 years. Drawers full of broken electronics, batteries that may or may not work, shoes so far in the back of the closet that you forgot you owned, various kitchen utensils and tupperware boxes that guests have left behind and forgotten to pick up over the years. Come to think of it, I've never actually bought my own tupperware boxes. Instead the universe has been handing them out to me at regular intervals in every shape and size,even some that seem to be part of the same set. In my apartment in Venice; however, there is only one tupperware box usually filled with yesterday's pasta.Maybe I should start having more visitors. In this home, kitchen utensils in general are in short supply. There are four espresso cups and five wine glasses, almost none of them matching. There is one wooden cutting board, which tastes like onion no matter how much you attempt to scrub the flavor away. The pieces of apple I put in my oatmeal in the morning always have an onion aftertaste. I don’t hate it anymore, I guess one can get used to anything. I have even mastered baking my notorious olive bread without measuring spoons, without measuring the deciliters, and no longer need to use a kitchen scale. There isn't even a mixer involved. I knead the dough by hand as if it’s actually the 1600s, as most other things in this apartment suggest. Our apartment consists of Baroque furniture that is quite literally falling apart, a fireplace that we are forbidden to use due to the city's status as a UNESCO World Heritage site, and wooden beams on the ceiling covered in mysterious marks as if they've been cut with a knife or perhaps an ax. Then of course there is the ghost, I felt her presence immediately during my very first night here. She appears to me in paralyzing fear in the dark, scratching within the walls, murky water appearing on the floor at night along with dead animals collecting in our garden. She regularly wakes me up at three in the morning and then again at six. She keeps me up at night, and regularly gives me nightmares that are so vivid and attuned to my psyche that they haunt me for days. When I crawl into bed at night and look up at the centuries-old beams on my bedroom ceiling, a pale green nebula stares back at me. The people who lived here before me have glued glow-in-the-dark stars on and between the beams, possibly to overcome the fear of the dark that comes with living in a haunted apartment.

Venice Biennale

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