Magic Meeting - A Decade On
March 20–May 30, 2021
Hafnarborg welcomes guests to the exhibition Magic Meeting – A Decade On, by the Spanish-Icelandic artist duo and recipients of the Icelandic Art Prize 2021, Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson with the artist-and-activist collective The Magic Team.
The show is the latest step in their socially engaged and interventionist art practice, continuing their investigation into the merging of art and activism and experimentation with the magic of art and its agency as a tool for social transformation. The exhibition’s subject is the new Icelandic constitution, written in 2011 in response to the Icelandic public’s demand for a moral inventory and advance in Iceland’s decolonization process following the financial crisis in 2008—project that gained international attention for its innovative and democratic approach. On October 20, 2012, the people of the country voted in agreement of the new constitution in a national referendum. As of today, however, the new constitution has not been ratified by the Icelandic Parliament.
Magic Meeting is a follow-up to their latest performance In Search of Magic – A Proposal for a New Constitution for The Republic of Iceland. A durational and collective performance with The Magic Team—founded during the project—that took place on October 3, 2020, at the Reykjavík Art Museum, the streets of the city centre, in front of the Prime Minister’s Office and at Austurvöllur square at the Parliament House. Parallel to joining the activists for the new constitution in 2017, Libia and Ólafur in collaboration with Cycle Music and Arts Festival, invited between 2018–20 a large group of composers, musicians, artists, civil organizations, activists and members of the public to collectively create a multi-vocal composition and performance that brought to life all 114 articles of the new proposed Icelandic constitution.
The exhibition’s central piece is a new five-hour video work that captures the polyphonic performance. The work is made from professional video recordings and cellphone recordings made by viewers and participants documenting the happening and is interspersed with archival footage from the era of social unrest in Iceland in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash until today. A 120-minute version of the film will be televised by RÚV, the national broadcaster, during the exhibition period.
At the exhibition, a porous immersive multimedia environment expands beyond the walls of the art centre into public space and media. It is comprised of works from their ongoing project starting in 2017, and works that predate it but inform its foundation and background. Photographs, sketches, videos and drawings documenting the process and their collaborations, from idea to performance, will be on display as well as the monumental text and textile works that were used for it. During the show live performances from In Search of… will take place, blurring the line between the actual space and the film.
As part of a social movement, the project itself is ever-evolving and the work will be changing over the course of the show. The centre´s ground floor gallery opens a week later as a work-in-progress space, with workshops, talks, informative and activists assemblies and as a place of ongoing research and production of new work in relation to the current campaign for the constitution. A symposium is scheduled for mid-May on the main topic and similar sociopolitical struggles around the world, art and activism. In this multifaceted manner, Libia & Ólafur and The Magic Team will occupy the museum space and transform it into a hub for critical reflection where art meets activism, as their innovative artworks and interventions in the sphere of art and politics and public debate keep on unfolding.
Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson have been collaborating since 1997 and their work has been exhibited at the 8th Havana Biennial, Van Abbe Museum, Manifesta 7, the 54th Venice Biennial, CAAC Seville, Kunst-Werke Berlin, 19th Sydney Biennial, Norway´s National Gallery and La Casa Invisible, Málaga. They work in Reykjavík, Berlin, Rotterdam and Málaga.
