What: “Fabulous Iceland: From Sagas to Novels” Exhibit
When: April 19 – May 9, 2012
Where: The Frieda and Roy Furman Gallery
Walter Reade Theater / Film Society of Lincoln Center
165 West 65 St., Second Floor
New York, New York 10023
The art exhibition, “Fabulous Iceland: From Sagas to Novels”, chronicling the literary inspiration of Iceland will open at Lincoln Center on April 19 in time for the beginning of the Icelandic film series “Images from the Edge: Classic and Contemporary Icelandic Cinema,” which will run from April 18-26. Through a series of interviews, the journalist Petur Blondal asked 23 contemporary Icelandic authors to describe their relationships with Icelandic literary traditions and the influence these traditions have on their work. The result is an Icelandic literary history, distilled into individual short stories and coupled with portraits taken by Kristinn Ingvarsson.
Iceland’s rich narrative tradition dates back to the Middle Ages and is often apparent in contemporary Icelandic literature. Iceland has managed to maintain its literary traditions due to the consistency of the Icelandic language over several centuries, along with the vast archive of characters, stories, narrative techniques and imagery found in traditional Icelandic literature. These influences leave an abundant literary repository for new texts to draw upon.
“It has always fascinated me to hear of the places that writers seek inspiration,” said Petur Blondal. “In the Icelandic literary scene they may reach back many ages to the Icelandic Sagas or to the works of Nobel prize author Halldor Laxness from last century. Or the colorful and lively artist parties at their childhood home could have made all the difference. In diverse voices, all of these authors stories flow from one generation to the other and hopefully they become an inspiration for new authors.”
The exhibition features 23 Icelandic authors who have told their story of literary inspiration, which is depicted as text beneath their portraits. This exhibition provides visitors with a view on Icelandic contemporary literature and the roots of its inspiration as well as an insight to the Icelandic Sagas and Reykjavik UNESCO City of Literature. It opens to the public on April 19 at the Frieda and Roy Furman Gallery at Lincoln Center.
To view the exhibit online, please click here.
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