The Reykjavík Grapevine Art Festival Special 2015

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R E Y K JAV Í K A R T S F E S T I VA L S P EC I A L

Reykjavík Goes Art Words by John Rogers Photo by Guerrilla Girls Much like the arrival of the golden-feathered plover, the annual Reykjavík Arts Festival is a welcome sign that spring is finally here. Since 1970, the festival has offered Reykjavík’s populace an excuse to step out into the light for a month of multitudinous open-air performances, exhibition openings, dance productions and cross-disciplinary art events, hosted all around the city. But as with any such urban festival, if you blink, you could miss it. With that in mind, we’ve created the guide that you’re holding in your hands, in order to flag some must-see events and to look a little deeper into the festival’s programme. In the following pages we talk to Hanna Styrmisdóttir, the artistic director of the festival, about this year’s focus subject, namely the work of women, and the conjoined issues of censorship and the struggle for rights. As Iceland reaches the centenary of the women’s vote, Hanna has some fascinating things to say about the troubling realities that lie beneath Iceland’s ostensibly world-leading record on gender equality, particularly in the arts. We also talk to some of the people be-

hind this year’s major productions. From the attention-grabbing feminist collective Guerrilla Girls, to works from the Iceland Dance Company and aerial dance troupe BANDALOOP, to the groundbreaking gender-bending opera Magnus Maria, and more—there’s a lot here to get excited about. Finally, we got in touch with some of the women who make Reykjavík’s arts scene tick to hear their ground-level experience of the issues at hand, and to talk about what the Reykjavík Arts Festival means for the city’s cultural life. So please, get stuck into the following pages, head out to as many events as you can, and most of all, have a happy festival!


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