The exhibition is a video-installation of works created for the occasion of the Hamraborg Festival. Three live-sized arcade games make the structure for three different video works that echo the aesthetics of early video games as well as music videos, thus creating a convincing visual and sound composition embodied in the characteristic space of Catalina.
The performance and visual artist Elísabet Birta Sveinsdóttir invited visual artists Joanna Pawlowska, Sasa Lubinska, and Weronika Wysocka as well as the artist’s parents to collaborate on each video. The work explores the visual metaphors of an extended persona of Elísabet Birta, a figure that is in the center of the exhibition, AfterpartyAngel, a character torn between the angelic mission and earthly indulgence.
The installation at Catalina takes on the guise of an arcade game that refers to the actual slot machines present in the bar’s basement, but becomes a gate to yet another secret world.
The installation explores the relationships between queer potential of re-inventing meanings and the power of disguise, but also addresses performativity and fluid dynamics of new media narratives. The artist shares with the audience the complexity of these relations and atmospheres, through a humorous and gently mischievous lens.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a live music performance by AfterpartyAngel (Saturday 26.08.2023, Catalina, 20.00, Punk concert at Catalina).
Elísabet Birta Sveinsdóttir (b. 1991) is a performance and visual artist from Iceland. In 2023 Elísabet was nominated for the Icelandic Art Prize (category Motivational Award) for their exhibition Mythbust at Kling og Bang. Sveinsdóttir’s work reflects on perceptions of femininity and humanity within the contextual framework of humankind’s relationships with other species and notions of our common qualities. They take a performative approach, incorporating their body and drawing on personal experiences for material. They work in a variety of mediums, with a main focus on performance and film, considering the symbolic nature of filmmaking within a historical narrative as well as the mixing of genres and familiar tropes.
Curator: Joanna Pawlowska
@joanna.superhorse
