Ragnar Kjartansson's politically charged soap opera—halted by the Russia-Ukraine war—goes on show in Reykjavík.
Soap Opera, an ambitious video work by the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson, is on view for the first time at the project space of Reykjavík’s gallery i8, i8 Grandi. The piece is a recording of Santa Barbara: A Living Sculpture, a durational performance which explored immigration, class, war and power through the medium of daytime television, and took place at Moscow’s GES-2 House of Culture between December 2021 and February 2022.
Kjartansson’s original performance featured a restaged production of the American TV show Santa Barbara, which aired in Russia from 1992 to 2002, making it the country’s longest-running series. During the performance, Russian and Ukrainian actors recited the lines in Russian inside a former power station, where Ragnar Kjartansson and his team built a sprawling production complex of sets, a costume department, and an editing studio open for visitors to explore during filming.
