Elina Brotherus’ Rules of the Game at the National Gallery of Iceland Ástríður Magnúsdóttir The Finnish photographer and visual artist Elina Brotherus (b. 1972) drew attention early on in her career with her autobiographical and unusual self-portraits that reflected her daily life and mundane chores with gravity and humour. She has a Master’s degree in photography from the University of Art and Design (UIAH) in Helsinki, and resides in Finland and France. In her art she has mostly focused on self-portraits and landscape. Her body and presence are an important feature in her works. Brotherus started displaying her works in the ‘90s with a group of avant-garde photographers in Finland named the
Helsinki School. She is a renowned contemporary artist and has exhibited her work around the world, such as the Pompidou in Paris, Neue Berliner Kunstverein in Berlín, Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki, and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. Her works have been exhibited in Iceland, in the i8 Gallery in Reykjavík in 2000, and at a group exhibition at Gerðarsafn, Kópavogur Art Museum, in 2006. Brotherus now exhibits new works from the years 2016-17 at the National Gallery of Iceland, under the title Rules of the Game, as part of
The Icelandic Photography Festival 2018. The title refers to game rules and playfulness; both the joyful and the serious. In an interview in 2016, Brotherus has said she gets the more playful as she gets older. Making art and playing games makes you forget time and place, but rules are the foundation of play and they must be followed. The works at the exhibition are multi-layered narratives referring to the aforementioned playfulness, as well as towards taking life seriously. The curator, Birta Guðjónsdóttir, says in an introduction to the exhibition that Elina sets her own rules of the game and follows them within the
Elina Brotherus. A Naked Women Ascends an Escalator (Nu montant un Escalator). 2017. Still from a video. Photo: Sigurður Gunnarsson. Cour tesy of The National Galler y of Iceland.
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