Ragnar Kjartansson, Margrét Bjarnadóttir, & Bryce Dessner<br/> <em>No Tomorrow</em>, 2022 (still)<br/> Six-channel video installation with sound Duration: 29:18 minutes<br/> Commissioned by Sigurður Gísli Pálmason, based on a commission by the Iceland Dance Company<br/> © Ragnar Kjartansson, Margrét Bjarnadóttir, & Bryce<br/> Dessner; Courtesy of the artists, Luhring Augustine, New York and i8 Gallery, Reykjavik.<br/>
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01 Introduction
01 The Visitors
02 Me and My Mother
03 Mercy
04 Scenes from Western Culture
05 Figures in Landscape
06 Steak (Variation on Meat Joy)
07 Sunday without Love
08 No Tomorrow
09 Credits

Introduction and interview by Amita Kirpalani, NGV Curator, Contemporary Art

MERCY surveys the video and film works of multidisciplinary Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson. The making of any exhibition entails many conversations – between the artist, their studio and the NGV team – to decide its shape and form. For MERCY, many individuals contributed to these conversations, including those working behind the scenes. Over several months we discussed which works would provide the right ‘tempo’ for this exhibition. Lilja Gunnarsdóttir, Ragnar’s studio manager and another crucial architect of MERCY, used this description, and ‘tempo’ feels like the perfect notion to keep in mind when experiencing Ragnar’s work. Depending on the viewer’s mood, perhaps I might linger, or stay for one more loop; I might make personal associations with a lyric, or spot a wink or a glance that gives me pause.

For this publication we talked with Ragnar about the ‘behind the scenes’ of his works – their inspiration, genesis and how they came to together. As Ragnar said at one point, ‘It’s so chaotic where the pieces come from. Some come from sketchbooks, some come from conversation. Some come when you’re doing the dishes – they just suddenly pop up. And these artistic collaborations I have are just things that happen in friendship.’

Over several Zoom conversations and through many voice-note exchanges, we unpacked associations, explored reference material and discussed aspects of his childhood that have shaped his relationship with performance, music, theatre and art.

The Visitors 2012

Ragnar Kjartansson

I like the meta-analogy of being in a band together, and allowing each other space, or having a fight or disagreement, or coming to the group with something really forceful or soft. The Visitors was inspired by all these various manifestations of what it is to be in a band – what I imagine happening in the lounge room, in the kitchen, in the bedroom. It’s a conversation.

Ragnar by the porch at Rokeby before filming The Visitors. In the background are Hákon Sverrisson, Tómas Örn Tómasson and Richard Welnovski with the camera equipment. Photo: Elisabet Davids

Ragnar Kjartansson

There’s so much music around the recording of the music and filming of a piece. My video works are really related to recording in a studio. But making a film is something quite different. It’s actually, weirdly, more freeing than recording a track or song. It is to record a painting.

I remember the idea being to do a piece in the house at Rokeby Farm in upstate New York. My friend was finishing his studies nearby at Bard College, and he curated a show I was performing in; I was looking to live at Rokeby while I was performing at Bard.

Ragnar with Rokeby Farm owners Ania and Ricky Aldrich. Photo: Elisabet Davids

Ragnar Kjartansson, Score for The Visitors, 2012, ink and watercolour on paper. Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York and i8 Gallery, Reykjavik

Ragnar Kjartansson

It sort of lingered in my head that it would be a dream to bring friends – musicians – there and make some kind of a piece. Then I was putting together a band – the idea was to create a really great band from people I knew in the Reykjavik music scene – and I just remember inviting people and really selling the point that we were going to live in this chateau and we were going to eat good food and it was going to be fabulous. And it was.

I treat these works like an invitation to a recording session: you take it seriously that people have given their time to create them with you. I always look at it as a favour people are doing for me. I hardly ever see it like I’m inviting people, and more that they are doing me a favour.

Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir, Gyða Valtýsdóttir and Ragnar. Photo: Elisabet Davids

Kjartan Sveinsson, Gyða Valtýsdóttir and Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir. Photo: Elisabet Davids

Moving the grand piano together: Kjartan Sveinsson, Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir, Shahzad Ismaily, Gyða Valtýsdóttir, Ragnar, Christoper McDonald and Davíð Þór Jónsson. Photo: Elisabet Davids

From the filming of The Visitors. Photo: Elisabet Davids

Artwork credit

Ragnar Kjartansson
Icelandic 1976–

The Visitors
2012
nine-channel video with sound
64 min

Commissioned by the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich
Courtesy of TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Madrid

2005
2010
2015
2025

Me and My Mother 2000–

Amita Kirpalani

Guðrún Ásmundsdóttir, Ragnar’s mother, is a highly respected film and theatre actor in Iceland and beyond. She is ninety years old. In addition to Me and My Mother, she also appears in Ragnar’s work Take me Here by the Dishwasher, 2011, an installation that includes a sequence from the film 1977 film Morðsaga (Murder Story). The Icelandic drama features Ásmundsdóttir as a lonely housewife, while Ragnar’s father, Kjartan Ragnarsson, plays the plumber she calls in her dreams to repair the dishwasher.

Ragnar Kjartansson

My mum always says you should never destroy a good story with the truth. She really always feels sorry for people who are not actors. It’s like those of us who are not actors chose a pathetic part in life. When I was a teenager my mother helped me read poetry and do some preparation to apply for theatre schools. But then, kind of secretly, I just applied for art school.

Ragnar and his mother, Guðrún, at the kitchen table in her home, where they celebrate with coffee and cake each time after filming a Me and My Mother video

Ragnar Kjartansson

I remember in art school being scolded so much for not being earnest enough – actually, both in art school and in music. So, slowly, at this time, my earnestness and my pretentiousness started to be the same thing.

I’m not pretentious, but this is the irony: I think everything I do is earnest. But I have a complicated relationship with being earnest. And I think irony is dismissed too much. For example, Mozart made all his stuff ironically. Irony is a sister of sincerity. We are always very sincere when we’re ironic. Maybe it comes from like my godmother who was always saying, ‘You have to remember that nobody’s interested in what you are doing.’

Artwork credit

Ragnar Kjartansson
Icelandic 1976–

Me and My Mother 2000
single-channel video with sound
7 min 07 sec

Me and My Mother 2005
single-channel video with sound
3 min 40 sec

Me and My Mother 2010
single-channel video with sound
20 min

Me and My Mother 2015
single-channel video with sound
20 min 25 sec

Me and My Mother 2020
single-channel video with sound
10 min 38 sec

Me and My Mother 2025
single-channel video with sound
6 min 45 sec

Courtesy of the artist, i8 Gallery, Reykjavík and Luhring Augustine, New York

Mercy 2004

Ragnar Kjartansson

Mercy is the oldest work in the exhibition, but I always feel like the pieces are recent. I never feel like, ‘Oh this is from back in the day.’ I don’t even realise that I am much younger than I am now. It’s weird. Maybe it’s because I look at them as paintings that they don’t feel as much like photographs from a specific time, or something like that.

I am always thankful for Mercy and that piece because it led me to a fruitful field where I could continue playing around with the idea of music – roles in music, points of view and the cultural background of music. For Mercy I was working with the idea that in country songs, the guy singing is the victim. I found it interesting to think about the idea of ‘Why do I keep on hurting you?’ or ‘Why am I always so mean?’ It’s also related to the song ‘Insensatez’ (‘How Insensitive’) by the bossa nova musician Antônio Carlos Jobim, which is one of those few songs that take on guilt.

I really like the word Mercy because it is a gracious, beautiful word on the one hand, where it is warm and full of love, but on the other hand it makes me think of ‘show mercy’. It is like the backside of violence. It’s a bit of a brutal word – It’s a positive but brutal word. I find it interesting that mercy and empathy are frowned upon in contemporary social media culture. But it’s good to remember mercy, it’s a good word. Because we tend not to show mercy.

For some reason, I very much like to see the word in relation to my works. This may also be because it has this religious side to it, which I also find interesting. I always find these big religious words full of the scent of incense. Religion is heavy and I dig it.

I always wanted to be in bands. Going to art school was a part of that because so many bands went to art school. Being in bands really helped me to think about art making as a conceptual project that included other people. I’m always interested in bands like Devo or Kraftwerk or Talking Heads or something, bands that kind of create their own world. You know, I’m not a big fan of honesty.

Like Bob Dylan, everybody builds a persona. I think being in a band really had a huge effect on him. It somehow happened that I took the element of music and being in a band into the visual work.

Artwork credit

Ragnar Kjartansson
Icelandic 1976–

Mercy 2004
single-channel video with sound
62 min 30 sec

Courtesy of the artist, i8 Gallery, Reykjavik and Luhring Augustine, New York

Dinner
Dog and Clock
The Boat
Gentleman
The Pool

Scenes from Western Culture 2015–21

Ragnar Kjartansson

My feeling towards Western culture is claustrophobia, or maybe uneasiness. I admire it and I also find it oppressive. It might be a bit of a disgust thing too, because Western culture takes everything and it devours the world and everything in its path.

Dinner (Jason Moran and Alicia Hall Moran)

This is Jason Moran and Alicia Hall Moran, who are brilliant musicians, and Jason is also a great artist. I really like how he works with music in a visual way. I was looking for very Hitchcock-like restaurant for the setting, and was looking at all kinds of old school restaurants in New York. Then we stumbled on this establishment called the 21 Club. Donald Trump went there to celebrate when he won the election in 2016, probably to have a burger and Diet Coke or something like that. It’s near the Grand Army Plaza in New York, where there’s a statue of General Sherman on a horse. I was so happy to get that cliche, the ‘conqueror’ on the horse, in the background.

There’s this interesting thing: whatever you do in America, it always becomes about the race tension. The 21 Club, it’s this very white, WASPy place, and them being there, just as a couple talking about mundane things, was interesting to me. We don’t hear the conversation, but the waiter says, ‘We have had every president come to the 21 Club except Barack Obama.’ And they are like, ‘Oh, really? He must have had something more important to do.’ So it's great. It’s just like this lovely, lovely painting of a couple having dinner, but there is all this stuff simmering underneath.

Dog and Clock

This is the key work because the whole Scenes from Western Culture series is based on a Swedish children’s program. There was state TV in Iceland when I was a kid, and there were no children programs except on Wednesdays, just after the news between 8:15 and 8:30. I mean, now they show children’s programs all the time – so, so many cartoons. But this was the only time we could see children’s shows, Tom and Jerry and stuff like that.

Occasionally there would be a Swedish show called Bilderboken, or The Picture Book, and it was always such a disappointment – sad torture. There was one which I was trying to look for but couldn’t find again on the mighty internet: it was seriously just a dog asleep. Then the clock chimed and the dog sat up and did a ‘woof’ and it was over. That was the extent of the children’s material. I remember that we were offended by how boring it was.

Dog and Clock was filmed at the house of my favourite author, Halldór Laxness, and the clock that chimes is the clock from Iceland’s national radio, which is like ‘the clock of Iceland’. We borrowed it.

The Boat (Stephan Stephensen, Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir and Gyða Valtýsdóttir)

I love the beautiful Swiss lakes, but they just mean capitalism now. They mean affluence. It used to be that, in the nineteenth century, Swiss lakes represented the wild and the unknown, but now they just mean an expensive watch and life insurance.

Filming The Boat in Switzerland. Photos: Lilja Gunnarsdóttir

In the background of the piece is a heterosexual white couple kissing each other on a pier. Everything is so perfect about it. Oppressively perfect. But there is a trick, because the woman is in fact identical twins Kristín Anna and Gyða Valtýsdóttir. We drove the boat to the middle of the lake and made the pick-up, exchanging the twins in the middle of the lake. It was a completely ridiculous piece of choreography, making it happen behind the scenes.

There was the boat Stephan Stephensen was on, and then there was a boat in the middle of the lake, which Kristín and Gyða would hop off into his boat pretending to be the same person in this rather short loop. Then, when they would drive to shore, they would take another boat to the middle of the lake, and so they would always exchange there. It feels like it’s the same person, but it’s always Kristín and Gyða taking turns. In the middle of the shoot, the boat broke down and so we got another boat and it was total mayhem. But it’s so calm – well, calm up until Stephan falls in the water.

Filming The Boat in Switzerland. Photos: Lilja Gunnarsdóttir

Stephan is so great the way he does it. He’s disappointed and ****** for like a few seconds. It was not choreographed. Stef was a techno DJ and a musician, and for years and years was in this Icelandic techno band called GusGus. He’s a ridiculously cool guy, so I wanted him, the ridiculously cool guy, to be the charmer on the pier. He knows boats, so to fall in the water was such a humiliation.

Gentleman (Kjartan Sveinsson)

It’s fun to ask friends to do tasks: ‘Can you be in a suede jacket and just, you know?’ and they obey you. This was filmed in my studio. I’m interested in the tuxedo as this contemporary costume of power. I just wanted Kjartan Sveinsson, who is in the band Sigur Rós, to stand there doing nothing – I think he smokes one cigarette – almost like a little thought piece about pathos. Will there be pathos with him or not, when there’s just a guy standing there in a tuxedo and nothing happens? No, probably not.

It was just like, ‘Kjartan, can you stay in a tuxedo for hours and hours?’ Kjartan does yoga. Kjartan could do it. And Kjartan is so beautiful. We always make fun of him for his good looks. He was just up for it. It was the revenge for his good looks!

The Pool (Elizabeth Peyton)

We were vacationing with the painter Elizabeth Peyton in the south of France, and there was a swimming pool there. She’s a very talented swimmer; she was just always swimming. Her dog, this scared animal, was always trying to save her – it was worried about its master in the water.

It is such a beautiful but also beastly scene, because everything – Elizabeth, the water and the swimming pool – is so elegant. Then there’s just this relentless beast there all the time. I really like those contrasts.

Artwork credit

Ragnar Kjartansson
Icelandic 1976–

Scenes from Western Culture
2015–21

Scenes from Western Culture, Dog and Clock
2015
single-channel video with sound
19 min

Scenes from Western Culture, The Pool (Elizabeth Peyton)
2015
single-channel video with sound
24 min 37 sec

Scenes from Western Culture, Gentleman (Kjartan Sveinsson)
2015
single-channel video with sound
3 hours 10 min

Scenes from Western Culture, Dinner (Jason Moran and Alicia Hall Moran)
2015
single-channel video with sound
1 hour 20 min 46 sec

Courtesy of the artist, i8 Gallery, Reykjavik and Luhring Augustine, New York

Friday
Wednesday
Saturday

Figures in Landscape (Monday–Sunday) 2018

Ragnar Kjartansson

I think everybody can understand what it is to make an artwork. You know, everybody who has done a birthday party or a baby shower – you’re kind of brainstorming in your head about staging. If you organise a birthday party or a baby shower, you hope it goes well, but there's much more pressure on an artwork for the magic to emerge, and to not stop until the magic emerges. It’s the same as when you're hosting a birthday party. It has to be magical. It has to be great.

Ragnar during his time at The School of Housewives in 1997. He was the first male student and after that they changed the name of the school.

Ragnar Kjartansson

I often think about how it’s almost the same as when I was in high school. I was in the decorating department, where we would decorate for the prom, the Christmas party and for school plays. We would decorate the halls of the school. There are so many similarities between being in the decorating department in high school and being an artist, more or less tinsel depending. The decorations have to be original.

Maybe I tell this to myself to not be precious and take off pressure. Some artists like to work with art as a precious thing – and art is a precious thing – but I have to depressurise it for myself in some way. I’m never thinking of art as something holy and inaccessible.

The filming of Figures in Landscape at RVK Studios. Photo: Halldór Örn Óskarsson

Scene painting for Figures in Landscape in the set workshop from the Reykjavik City Theatre. Photo: Lilja Gunnarsdóttir

Scene painting for Figures in Landscape in the set workshop from the Reykjavik City Theatre. Left to right: Christoph Fischer, Julia Krawczynski, Camilla Haegebarth and Anda Skrejane. Photo: Lilja Gunnarsdóttir

Christoph Fischer, Julia Krawczynski, Camilla Haegebarth and Anda Skrejane. Photo: Lilja Gunnarsdóttir

Ragnar Kjartansson

We met four amazing artists during the Palace of the Summerland performance back in 2014. Julia, Anda, Christoph and Camilla were students in set design at the time, but they have come to work on all the important sets since then. They really are a dream team to work with. Every time a set was ready in the workshop they would photograph a bizarre scene just to celebrate: here they are tourists in the highlands.

Artwork credit

Ragnar Kjartansson
Icelandic 1976–

Figures in Landscape (Monday) 2018
Figures in Landscape (Tuesday) 2018
Figures in Landscape (Wednesday) 2018
Figures in Landscape (Thursday) 2018
Figures in Landscape (Friday) 2018
Figures in Landscape (Saturday) 2018
Figures in Landscape (Sunday) 2018
24 hours each

Commissioned by the Danish Building and Property Agency for the Faculty of Health, University of Copenhagen
Courtesy of the artist, i8 Gallery, Reykjavik and Luhring Augustine, New York

Steak (Variation on Meat Joy) 2013

Ragnar Kjartansson

As a child I would put a towel around my shoulders and get out a broomstick and just lie on the floor and be a dead king. I would imagine the funeral procession and how his reign was ending. It’s because I saw the graves of the dead kings in Roskilde in Denmark, where all the Danish kings are buried. There’s always this sense of that game when I make performance art, because I never played the role, I just put on clothes as the dead king. I was just myself lying there thinking about the dead king.

The artist dressed as Apollo, Athens, 1986

Ragnar Kjartansson

It’s a very similar approach to making performances. I just put on a costume but I never put on a role… I never actually play someone. That was the thing, that was also why I couldn’t do theatre, because I was always trying to ‘do theatre’ but I never could, I never could be in a role. I just didn't get it. I just like being in a costume and saying lines. But I am always just myself.

Ingibjörg Sigurjónsdóttir, Ragnar and Lilja Gunnarsdóttir during preparations for the performance of Steak (Variation on Meat Joy) at Tate Modern

Ragnar Kjartansson

My love of the Rococo period goes back to seeing the film Amadeus (Miloš Forman, 1984) when I was around seven. I went again and again to the cinema. I was given money to go to the cinema, so I saw it like seven times. I was also always drawing characters in Rococo clothes.

Ragnar painting the space for the performance and video work. Photo: Lilja Gunnarsdóttir

Ragnar Kjartansson

There’s a frivolity to the Rococo period that’s always enchanted me. Being raised in the twentieth century, in like, modernism, was just so much the opposite of enchantment. I remember my dad and granddad always kind of making fun of Rococo, that it was ridiculous, just artifice and somehow not true or real art. I think a lot of what was discussed in negative terms when I was a kid, later I became interested in. It’s like, ‘Why do you hate this? I’m going to hate it too, but in a loving way.’

It reminds me of something the twentieth-century art historian Kenneth Clark said. I really like Kenneth Clark – it’s really egocentric, he was somebody telling art history completely from his perspective, a 1960s view of the world. He talks about the aristocracy in the eighteenth century with this beautiful description, 'They were as ignorant as swans'. It’s a beautiful description, to be as ignorant as a swan.

During the Rococo period, people in the upper classes had seriously sensual lives. It’s the period when humanism really begins – ironically in this time of frivolousness and almost ridiculous appearance – with sharp, brilliant thoughts. Rococo offers this pursuit of pleasure and happiness. I think about the American Declaration of Independence, which has this line ‘the pursuit of Happiness’. That could only have been said in the Rococo era. Of course, this is all about those writing it rather than those shining the shoes of those who are writing it. There is the brutality. What’s also enchanting about the period is there is all this pleasure in stomping on the heads of others. Maybe it’s that evilness that I’m also attracted to, those benefiting from the sacrifices and oppression of others.

To make all this pleasure last, you really have to whip others into obedience. Of course, its way more complicated than this. My father was a socialist and I was raised to think that things like this were the ultimate disgusting thing. That’s why the French Revolution occurred, because of all this excess. Maybe it’s because it’s such a metaphor – the whole Rococo era is such a metaphor.

I was so scared making this piece because I have this problem: things can get really stuck in my throat. I was eating the steak without having anything to drink with it. I was so scared it was going to be stuck in my throat. I was just totally scared. Why did I put myself into this position? It’s probably the most scary performance I’ve done because, for me, eating a steak without water is so scary. Once a steak got stuck in my throat for four days. In the piece I couldn’t drink water because I wanted it to be just steak. No pleasure.

Artwork credit

Ragnar Kjartansson
Icelandic 1976–

Steak (Variation on Meat Joy) 2013
single-channel video with sound
23 min 11 sec

Courtesy of the artist, i8 Gallery, Reykjavik and Luhring Augustine, New York
Original performance commissioned as part of BMW Tate Live: Performance Room, Tate Modern, 2013

Sunday without Love 2025

Ragnar Kjartansson

Most of the time my pieces derive from performances. The video pieces are related to the idea of performing, either with an audience or in front of the camera. They are very seldom cinematic in their approach. When it comes to performance and video, for me, it’s very simple: I feel like performance is sculptural and video is painterly.

Rehearsals by Laghetto Rautner in Italy, where the performance and filming took place. Photos: Lilja Gunnarsdóttir

Ragnar Kjartansson

Sunday without Love and Steak (Variation on Meat Joy) were performances very much conceived for the video format from the beginning. I was thinking about performing them, but at the same time I was thinking, ‘They will be interesting in film.’ But then other pieces I feel are performances have nothing to do with being shot on film later. Usually, around the time I am conceiving the idea, I start thinking about whether it should be a performance or a film, or a performance and a film, and it varies. For me the two are incredibly close. I really like filming performances.

With Sunday without Love, the first idea was that it should be a video. Then we decided to also make a performance for the TRANSART25 festival; my first idea was to shoot a video and show that in the festival. Then we made the decision to perform it live, which was awesome, but the piece for me was first and foremost a video. A postcard kickstarted the idea – I always wanted this piece to be a painting instead of a sculpture.

Rehearsals by Laghetto Rautner in Italy, where the performance and filming took place. Photos: Lilja Gunnarsdóttir

Ragnar Kjartansson

Variation on Meat Joy was a performance commissioned by Tate Modern for the mighty internet many years ago, so it was made for the camera and performed as a live stream. At the end of the day it was done for the camera, so both these pieces are pretty camera-oriented.

All this is a bit of a mess in my head, which most things are, and I think that is the essence. When things totally make sense in my head, they are not that interesting. It has to be a bit of a mess so that artistically it interests me.

Rehearsals by Laghetto Rautner in Italy, where the performance and filming took place. Photos: Lilja Gunnarsdóttir

Artwork credit

Sunday without Love 2025
single-channel video with sound
19 min 14 sec

Courtesy of the artist, i8 Gallery, Reykjavik and Luhring Augustine, New York
The original performance was commissioned by TRANSART25, presented in Renon, Italy in September 2025

Ragnar Kjartansson, Margrét Bjarnadóttir & Bryce Dessner, No Tomorrow 2022

Ragnar Kjartansson

Margrét Bjarnadóttir and I really know each other; she was the best friend of my ex-girlfriend and, suddenly, the idea of this musical ballet just came about and had to happen. The director of the Icelandic Dance Company was working on this project where she asked me, American artist Matthew Barney and Gabriela Friðriksdóttir, a great Icelandic artist, to collaborate with the dance company on creating pieces. She wanted to make three different pieces by three different artists.

I had this idea of a ballerina going over the stage with a guitar and somehow that the guitar would be ‘sonic movement’ on the stage; I just remember thinking about the chords from ‘Wild Horses’, the Rolling Stone song. So Margrét and I had a lunch. We had white wine and fish and – no, I had salad because I was like, it was a ballerina lunch. I asked her if she saw something in this idea and if we should collaborate on it. It was just this little, little idea, then Margrét was just like, ‘Yes, this could be something,’ and the idea just started growing.

Right away I contacted Bryce Dessner from the band The National to ask him if he was up for creating music for these for these ballerinas with guitars. Maybe my role was a lot about taking all those threads and tying them together. I also asked my other frequent collaborator, Kjartan Sveinsson, whom I worked with on a lot of pieces, and who is a composer and in the band Sigur Rós. It was like Mecca: Bryce and then Kjartan came in, and then of course the dancers. All our heads were in the same direction and it just happened. Bryce was like, dancers are the most intelligent people, they know how to count much better than any musician. That’s something Bryce knew and that I would not have known.

No Tomorrow rehearsals, sound and installation specialist Christopher McDonald in the foreground

No Tomorrow rehearsals, AC Hákon Sverrisson in the foreground

Ragnar Kjartansson

Margrét’s approach to movement and concept was very important. I also remember she was always saying that there are two things which are very important: it cannot be funny and it cannot be sexy. She was also like, ‘And I don't want this to be a piece where people say that they are strong women.’

Artwork credit

Ragnar Kjartansson
Icelandic 1976–
Margrét Bjarnadóttir
Icelandic 1981–
Bryce Dessner
American 1976–

No Tomorrow 2022
six-channel film, 30 channels of sound
29 min 18 sec

Courtesy of the artist, i8 Gallery, Reykjavik and Luhring Augustine, New York
Commissioned by Sigurður Gísli Pálmason; based on a commission by the Iceland Dance Company. The video work features the original cast of performers, all of whom were integral to the development of the work. The dancers in the work are: Aðalheiður Halldórsdóttir, Anais Barthe, Elín Signý Weywadt Ragnarsdóttir, Halla Þórðardóttir, Heba Eir Kjeld, Hjördís Lilja Örnólfsdóttir, Inga Maren Rúnarsdóttir and Lovísa Ósk Gunnarsdóttir.

Credits

First published in 2026 by
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