The artist team Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson will open the exhibition, Deconstruction of Heavy Industry in Helguvík, Saturday February 24, 2024. Light refreshments will be served, even if it is not the formal opening.
The opening party will be on Saturday March 9 at 2 pm.
Deconstruction of Heavy Industry in Helguvík is a project in process, we recommend guests to visit more than once and participate in the dialogue.
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The Reykjanes Art Museum is pleased to announce and welcome all to the exhibition and project in process, Deconstruction of Heavy Industry in Helguvík by the artists Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson and The Magic Team in dialogue and collaboration with the local activist group Opponents of Heavy Industry in Helguvík, other environmental activists, economists, people living in and around Reykjanesbær and curator Jonatan Habib Engqvist.
The empty shell of a large industrial building is staring at us from the horizon. The ghost of a closed down, polluting and bankrupted silicon plant located in Helguvík on the seismically unstable Reykjanes peninsula, a stones-through from the museum. A peninsula still haunted by the unclear environmental aftermath of the Naval Air Station Keflavik (NASKEF) which closed in 2006.
With Deconstruction of Heavy Industry in Helguvík the artists once again embark on a situated community scale art and activist project. This time addressing the catastrophic rise and fall of United Silicon, among other failed projects. A factory that ironically was projected to become the world’s largest silicon plant – with groundbreaking shoveling by the directors, local politicians, Iceland’s minster of industry, and the prime minister at the time. This was shortly before the prime minster resigned after appearing in the Panama Papers with his offshore shell company that had not been disclosed to parliament.
Eventually the factory was closed down by the Environment Agency of Iceland for environmental and health protection reasons after strong civic commitment from local residents. With a lifetime of only ten months, it perhaps became the shortest lived silicon factory in history. Yet its ghostly shadow still lingers on.
By focusing on social and environmental engagement, this exhibition brings together the diverse backgrounds, voices, and perspectives in Reykjanesbær, which also has the largest migrant and international community in Iceland. The dialogues will develop into work-collaborations throughout the exhibition, towards an interventionist performative public artwork addressing the situation of the factory and the site in relation to the community, the sustainability and protection of nature in the area and imagined futures.
Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson continue their collaborative work in tandem with activism, working with other people and stretching beyond disciplines, creating a space that will be both a situated public creation in becoming and an agent, practicing art as a useful tool, that serves to rethink and question the past and present in the area, and agitate towards future possibilities. This exhibition is an artwork in progress, encompassing installation, social sculpture, open public discussions, conversations, performance, film and text.
Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson started their collaboration in the Netherlands in 1997. Their works are collaborative and interdisciplinary; they work with video, photography, audio sculpture and multimedia installations, performance and interventions. Libia & Ólafur represented the Icelandic Pavilion at the 54th Biennale di Venezia (2011). They have presented their works in the public space in different cities across Europe and have exhibited solo shows at various venues around the globe.
Jonatan Habib Engqvist is an internationally active curator and author. From 2021 editor of Ord&Bild.
The exhibition is sponsored by the Museum Council of Iceland. Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson's project is supported by The Icelandic Visual Arts Council, Artists' Salary Fund, The Icelandic Visual Art Copyright Association, CBK Rotterdam art fund (Center of Visual Arts Rotterdam) and The Mondriaan Foundation.
Deconstruction of Heavy Industry in Helguvík will run until Sunday April 28, 2024.