The images of Gabríela Friđriksdóttir speak a language of myth and fairy tale. Fables filled with imaginary quests where protagonists travel to fantastic places and are confronted with the chaos of life. Like a dream you can’t forget nor completely understand, her imagery is brimming with powerful talismans and peopled with the grotesque and beautiful, using a visual vocabulary that engages more with intuition and instinct than intellectualism or direct verbal intercourse.

Always against the background of rural landscapes and with Icelandic folklore as its foundation, Friđriksdóttir’s tales contain narratives that beguile a viewer with elements of earth magic. Hay, mud, fire and water all play an integral part in her gritty narratives. Great toil infused with mysticism accent trojanesque quests.

Utilizing a wide range of media; from drawing to sculpture, and from photography to collaborative video and sound, Gabríela Friđriksdóttir creates stories that reflect a place where ritual and symbol, teeter on that hair’s breadth between dream and reality and speak with a deep language of desire; an ancient desire that has fueled the fury and power of gods and heroes for centuries, desire that draws one on a pilgrimage of longing. Within Friđriksdóttir’s imagery, the imbalance of emotions and their expulsion are also explored, attempting to secure stability in an unstable world.

Audiences who experience Gabríela Friđriksdóttir’s installations are given the rare invitation to encounter a complete environment of illusion far beyond the flat two-dimensions of a white wall gallery space. Sound mixes with exotic imagery: masked figures, animals and characters in rustic costumes contribute to the viewer’s experience as explorers on an esoteric journey. Her imagery plucks and teases at the very fibres of desire, which has always been the grist of ancient myth. Like Pandora’s box, they hold a deep mystery which unlocks secrets from furthest reaches of the unconscious.

In her polyphonic installation, Versations Tetralógia, which was chosen to represent Iceland in La Biennale di Venezia in 2005 she omitted the prefix con- from conversations in the title, to help illustrate her attempts at communication using a vocabulary of images and sound. In this piece as in her other works, Friđriksdóttir uses storytelling and imagery to get beyond spoken words in order to explore perceptions, urges, feelings and desires. Working collectively with musicians and artists in Versations Tetralógia, Friđriksdóttir creates an atmosphere where disorder and chaos are contemplated within a range of media while observing confusions and tensions within the basic fabric of these different media.

Gabríela Friđriksdóttir‘s worlds illustrate a creative and intellectual climate which she describes as Icelandic thinking, “…they swing from one opinion to another and detest a dead calm. A draught blows through the Icelandic mind. Like the young rock on which the Icelanders live, their thinking is similar: young, raw and insubstantial – unlike the solid marble of the Continent.” Within the mixing of imagery, media, symbol and ritual Gabríela Friđriksdóttir makes an artistic environment that is a whirlpool of the contemporary and ancient, pulling and dragging at the subconscious with powerful results.