Sonja Margrét Ólafsdóttir
Photography MFA
Valand Academy University of Gothenburg
Graduates: 2023
Specialisms:
My location: Reykjavík, Iceland
Sonja Margrét Ólafsdóttir
First Name: Sonja Margrét
Last Name: Ólafsdóttir
University / College: Valand Academy University of Gothenburg
Course / Program: Photography MFA
Graduates: 2023
Specialisms:
My Location: Reykjavík, Iceland
Website: Click To See Website
About
In my artistic practice I work with photography as my medium. I am working on a project where I am researching the history of a distant relative. An Icelandic poet and dramatist named Haraldur Hamar (1892-1957). The title of the work is I Saw Three Suns in the Sky. My intension with it is to shed light on a man that is mostly lost to time and shrouded in mystery.
The work includes collected material from the family archive, texts, my own photographs and I build and create objects that are inspired from the reasearch. I am playing with facts and fiction, I re-shape information and make things up. It is a play with history where I deal with the ghostly remains of a life lived and a world that has long since passed.
I began this work while I was in the MFA program in Fine Arts in Photography at HDK-Valand and I exhibited a chapter from it in the form of an istallation as my exam work.
Sonja Margrét Ólafsdóttir is researching the life of Haraldur Hamar (1892–1957), a poet and dramatist, who was also known as ‘Iceland’ while living in London in the early 20th century. Being a distant relative of Ólafsdóttir, the fate of Hamar had fallen into obscurity within the family. By way of historical and sociocultural remnants like texts, photographs and objects connected to Hamar’s life, a scattered story of a peculiar life emerges. Within the work, Ólafsdóttir’s own photographic reactions adds a visual layer to Hamar´s legacy.
Competitions
