HULDA RÓS GUÐNADÓTTIR

All is Full of Love mixed-media installation including Puffin Shop sculpture 2019

Artist as a Puffin remake in 2019

Material Puffin video from 2014

Academics Katla Kjartansdóttir and Kristinn Scram in their article Mobilising the Arctic. Polar Bears and Puffins in Transnational Interplay published in 2020 in peer-reviewed book publication ‘Mobility and Transnational Iceland’ that can be downloaded as a pdf here.

The Artist as a Puffin/The Puffin as an Artist

The puffin has also played a key role in several works by contemporary Icelandic visual artist Hulda Rós Guðnadóttir. In her work, Don’t Feed them after Midnight (2006), a mixed media installation, performance, and design, Guðnadóttir deals critically with the image of the Icelandic artist as a weird, elf-like figure akin to the vulnerable puffin. As stated in the short introductory text on her website, this work is “a game of reappropriation [sic], of taking control over the creation of meaning of the symbols representing one’s own identity” (Guðnadóttir 2006). The puffin is also a central figure in her work Material Puffin (2014) in which she plays with human/animal relations, national imagery, and gender roles. In this work, the artist appears wearing a festive pink gown and a large puffin mask in the harbour area in Reykjavík. As can be seen on one of the stills from the work, shown below, she holds a gas pump in her hand and seems to be spraying gold and glitter into the ocean. In her multi-layered visual narration, the artist gives the masculine harbour area a feminine touch and evokes challenging questions in relation to tourism and urban development, sustainability, ecological awareness, and future visions.

In yet another recent work entitled All is Full of Love (2019), Guðnadóttir again engages with the puffin as a mass-produced tourist souvenir and material emblem of contemporary Icelandic cultural identity. In this work, the artist critically explores questions relating to the commodification of ethnic identity (Comoroff and Comoroff 2009) that are linked to the massive growth of tourism in Iceland and the role of the artist (as a puffin) within ongoing social and cultural developments. Again, dressed in pink, she playfully positions, and literally masks herself as a puffin, with a large puffin mask on her head, inviting the viewer to participate in discussions of current socio-economic issues in the country, complex human/animal relations, and their local/global interplay. In Guðnadóttir’s works, the puffin evokes questions of how overexploitation can lead to the exhaustion or even complete extinction of natural resources. Along with the snowy owl and the European turtledove, the Atlantic puffin has recently been placed on the BirdLife International list of birds in danger of extinction (BirdLife International 2018). Although the puffin is indeed cute and cuddly, it can also be described as a non-human reminder of the fragile ecosystem of the Arctic, ecological anxieties, and the gloomy ecological prospects for our post-human/post-anthropocentric times, which include climate change, habitat-loss and/or bird extinction.

Video stills from ‘ I´m a very special artist from Iceland. Do you want to fuck?’, 2006.

Original text written in 2006 by the artist and Geirthrudur Finnbogadottir Hjörvar:

The figure of the Icelandic artist did in the beginning of the century achieve an original status through an identification process that has been granted by the international music press. This has involved the creation of a mythology that revolves around a cute-like identity that affects the psyche of the individual artist to the extent that he has come to look upon the myth as being his own creation.

At this point one can talk about the mystifying cult of the cute, weird, elf-like and nature oriented phenomena of the Icelandic artist. The reality of this cute (krutt) image comes with a proviso, especially within Reykjavik’s promiscuous bar scene: like Gremlins, the cute often becomes monstrous after midnight. This Gremlin is both exotic and erotically charged, and its not afraid to play with it. Icelandic art Gremlins, in particular, are a real curiosity.

Here it is interesting to note how the image of the puffin – the Icelandic bird - has been changed to cater to the tourist industry. The most recent images being a direct visual reference to Minnie Mouse. The puffin as a special brand instead of blood thirsty carnivore has become the icon of cuteness with  big, round, endearing eyes and a soft cuddly body. A parallel can under these circumstances be drawn between the mechanism of cuteness and that of horniness.  The postures and intonations of  the classical porn scene utilizes the same mechanisms as does an extremely cute puffin in that it invokes an involuntary response of a sympathetic nature.

The puffin, like Minnie Mouse before her, has become a curious hybrid of desire production. Gizmo turned into a Gremlin, which is the reverse process of the puffin turned Minnie Mouse, and the artist changed by the Cult of the Cute are all examples of opportunities of ironic intervention – a tool that our generation has to fight the melancholic boredom that accompanies the seemingly latté-ridden meaninglessness of modern life. It’s a game of reappropriation, of taking control over the creation of meaning of the symbols representing one’s own identity.