GABRÍELA FRIÐRIKSDÓTTIR

Gabríela Friðriksdóttir’s ironically naive idealism is also a certain kind of fetishistic geneology: of spiritualism, for instance, which due to its remarkable popularity often passes as the unofficial religion of the Icelanders. But whereas she is unable to envisage the guiding spirits of her ancestors-the fading of psychic force is but one aspect of the dissipating “aura” in modern televised society - Fridriksdottir generalizes them as amoebae: informal blobs akin to the omnipotent comic family of Barba Papa, able to assume whatever form they, or she wishes. Her comical “Pointer” (made in 1998) is such kind of a commercialized apparition of an ancestral figure, of a providential indicator whose guiding signals she feels free to follow or ignore.

- Halldór Björn Runólfsson