Ingibjörg Magnadóttir

Reykjavík, Iceland

Ingibjörg Magnadóttir earned her B.A. degree from the Iceland Academy of the Arts in 2000 and later she studied at the Figuratif Teater Skolen, Fredriksstad in Norway. In her practice Ingibjörg combines visual arts and theater in the most interesting manner. She wants to combine these disciplines to make a theatre where the writer and the stage designer are performing, where props becomes a sculpture and where the performance escapes the gallery setting onto the theater stage. Ingibjörg intends to break down the hierarchy in conventional theater by using unusual methods. She is a visual artist that uses the role of the actor, playwright and the director as material in the same fashion as a visual artist uses clay or painting. Her choice of mixing trained professional actors and ordinary people in her performances can be very surprising and realistic. Her prose is oftentimes very poetic and moving since she is dealing with universal feelings that touch one deep down to the marrow. Music and sounds are essential to her performances as are colors and textures. The outcome is a very picturesque and vivid performance. A recurrent theme in her works is God using the Quantum Universe as the gate.

Ingibjörg has held solo exhibitions at both Gallery Kling og Bang, Reykjavík (2006) and Gallery Slúnkaríki, Ísafjörður (2004) and taken part in various group exhibitions both locally and internationally including Bad Taste, Bozar, Belgium (2008); Apostles clubhouse, Reykjavík Art Museum, Reykjavík (2006) and Grassroots, Living Art Museum, Reykjavík (2002). Furthermore, she has taken part in various performance projects including Performance Kunst Nacht, TV Africa, Ballhaus Ost, Berlin, Germany (2007), I’m crying everyone tears, King of Sorrow, performance, Lilith Performance Studio, Sweden (2007) and at Safn, during Sequences real-time art festival, Reykjavík (2006).