About BJARGEY

Bjargey Ólafsdóttir lives and works in Reykjavík. She studied photography, painting and mixed media at Iceland Academy of the Arts, Reykjavík and Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki and she studied Screenwriting and Directing in Binger Filmlab, Amsterdam. Bjargey Ólafsdóttir’s practice is not confined to a single medium as each of her projects calls for a different tool: photography, film, sound art, performance and drawing. Her works are narrative by nature, telling stories of bored female dentists, rock stars in Japan and women that can see into the future and beyond. Her works are sometimes scary, yet beautiful and always brimming with humor and playfulness. In her work, Bjargey Ólafsdóttir plays with our preconceptions about what we see, about the mediums of film and photography, questioning what is real and what is fiction. 

In her recent photo series Scintilla, which was nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography prize and the Godowski Colour photography Award, Bjargey Ólafsdóttir put forward a world of the invisible and spiritual as an antidote to the materialistic excesses of present-day lifestyles, and it is this element that she also brought fourth in her project The Red Polarbear for the Earth as Canvas by 350.org.

Bjargey Ólafsdóttir work has been shown internationally in numerous exhibitions and Festivals, such as : The Reykjavík Art Museum, The Reykjavík Museum of Photography, Kunstverein Munich, KunstWerke Berlin,Germany, Galeria Traschi, Santiago Chile, Moderna Museet Stockholm, Sweden, The Moore Space Miami, USA, Manifesta Foundation Amsterdam, Netherlands, Turku Biennale, Finland, MEP, Paris, E-flux New York, WUK Kunsthalle, Vienna, Austria, Tate Modern London, Palm Springs International film festival, USA, Gothenburg Film Festival, Sweden, Aix en Provence international short film festival, France.