While Björk’s music has always been above reproach, her relationship with the art world has become more complicated. Yes, we all loved that he appeared at the opening of the Venice Biennale this year for a DJ set where he dressed as Labubu, but his retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 2015 is probably the worst-reviewed exhibition of the institution ever. Jason Farago called it a “fiasco,” Jerry Saltz called it a “sad mess,” and Roberta Smith called it “incredibly childish and boring.” And all that hate was collected by the New Yorker’s regular critic Peter Schjeldahl, who said the museum appeared “ridiculous in a wannabe groupie way.”
But Venice proved that we will never tire of seeing Björk grow in the art scene. “Echolalia” and “Metamorphlings” are two parallel exhibitions that opened earlier this summer at the National Gallery of Iceland for the Reykjavík Art Festival, and occupy all four of the museum’s exhibitions and the collective atmosphere of Björk and James Merry, her longtime creative director. Merry’s exhibition marks the first museum retrospective of her work, with over 80 masks and traditional items including embroidery, metal, jewelery and 3D printing, created for Björk but also Tilda Swinton and Iris van Herpen. Half of Björk includes a focused music-based installation: a preview of her upcoming album and two songs from the album’s timeline. Fossora (2022), An ancestor again Sad Land. These honor his late mother, environmental activist Hildur Rúna Hauksdóttir, and are in Reykjavík restored on a theatrical scale. The one-day attached rave, also called Echolalia, will coincide with the August 12 solar eclipse in Hafnarfjörður and celebrate the 40th anniversary of Björk’s co-founded label, Smekkleysa (“Bad Taste”).
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“Björk: Echolalia” |
In the catalog, Merry says he found it amusing that he was sometimes referred to as “Björk’s mask maker,” because “it was always like this little quest I was doing at night.” Moth (2015) emerged from the night when the two sat together preparing for that unlikely MoMA exhibition and MoMA’s first live performance. Vulnicura (2015), her album documenting her breakup with Matthew Barney. Björk had left examples of moths in the kitchen and Merry used these to create a wonderful curved form. Like much of Barney’s work, it shows sci-fi and S&M influences, but there’s no mistaking the piece for universality. Look closely and you see the symmetry of the pearl’s appearance, order in chaos.
Björk always lets you find her bass notes. Divorce is great, but what about the big ending? His resin Enter the Spoon (2021) appeared at a time when his mother, grandmother and grandfather died. Björk sits by her grandfather’s deathbed and on his last day she was given “this ugly plastic spoon” to give him glycerin to slow his breathing. He asked Merry to design the perfect death spoon. He found inspiration in the Icelandic tungljurt plant (also known as “moonwort”), and the beaks of baby birds. It appears in the film of An ancestora small shiny purple orchid boasting a small container that can hold milk. in the museum, An ancestor it is performed as a traditional procession in a remote Icelandic village. Björk’s son Sindri Eldon sings in the chorus and one can see how the spoon represents all these themes in one object. Life is not a zero sum but it moves from one organization to another.
The collaboration between Merry and Björk can be seen in this light: the energy of one person is translated into new forms. It’s a song Sad Land These shows require a nine-part choir presented as a 30-speaker surround sound installation, each transmitting a single voice from the Hamrahlíð Choir under Þorgerður Ingólfsdóttir—the conductor who directed Björk in the same choir when she was a 16-year-old member of Iceland’s bandíka. (“Cork The Bitch’s Arse”). Björk is not without creativity but thrives on direction and collaboration. “You get four hundred eggs,” he sings Sad Land“But only two or three nests.” This show explores a few of those nests.
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