In the Undergrowth.
Ars Longa. Djúpivogur. Iceland
Curated by Becky Forsythe and Þórhildur Tinna Sigurðsdóttir
Artists: Alanis Obomsawin (Abenaki, US/CA), Edda Karólína Ævarsdóttir (IS), Eva Ísleifs (IS, Gústav Geir Bollason (IS), Hallgerður Hallgrímsdóttir (IS), Nancy Holt (US), Ragna Róbertsdóttir (IS), Regn Evu (IS), Sigrún Hrólfsdóttir (IS), Sigurður Guðmundsson (IS), Tuija Hansen (CA), Vikram Pradhan (IN/IS), Wiola Ujazdowska (PL/IS)
In the Undergrowth
In the Undergrowth traces our entanglements with land, sea, forest, plant life and the quiet vitality of what often lies beneath notice. It listens for ways of relating to the world—particularly to the textures and temporalities of undergrowth—that are grounded in lived experience, cultural memory and embodied ways of knowing Many of these ways have long been upheld within ancestral and Indigenous and knowledge systems rooted in particular places, languages and lifeways. Yet, through the lens of history, such traditions have often been cast as peripheral to dominant worldviews—those shaped by academic, colonial and extractive frameworks that claim universality. We recognize these forms of knowledge not as static or belonging to the past, but as adaptive, resilient and continually shaped by the urgencies of the present.
With small teeth at the tips
2025, sculpture. Metal, paint.
In making this exhibition, we turned towards understandings that endure through story, intuition, memory and practice. We looked to philosophies emerging not only from specific communities in what are now called Canada, Iceland, India, Poland and the United States, but also from solidarities formed across geographies and generations. Here, knowledge is not only held in texts, but in gesture, in making, in land, in craft and in care The exhibition In the Undergrowth is not a fixed terrain, but a living, layered ecology—one that holds grief, protest, transformation and sensory knowledge. The artists approach these themes from divergent, yet deeply entangled perspectives. Some work intimately with organic materials or ritua action, grounding their practice in site, memory and bodily presence. Others take up perceptua thresholds, using abstraction or poetic speculation to evoke what lies beneath visibility and language Across their works, this “undergrowth” emerges both as a literal and metaphorical space: one of deca and renewal, historical sediment, and emotional resonance and resilience—a zone where dominan structures begin to loosen and new forms of relating may take root.
Eva Ísleifs’s practice draws us into the intimate terrain of the undergrowth—where scent, sensation and memory intermingle in the soil. Her works channel the moment when one lies among moss and heath, and the fragrance of decay and renewal—earth, flower, weed, herb—seeps into the body, calming the nervous system while awakening something cellular, ancient, shared. This sensory ecology is not a
metaphor but a lived relationship between moving bodies and the land—between insects, flora, human and animal. Maríustakkur (Geranium sylvaticum) or lady’s-mantle, a delicate, non-fertile pollen producing plant, becomes a quiet symbol of resilience and the feminine—rooted, unassuming, yet 1 Originally published in the "Rumbles" (news section) of Avalanche, no.11. (Summer 1975), 6. persistent. Rather than illustrating nature, Eva’s works participate in it—calling us to notice what lies low, what murmurs beneath: the soft reciprocity of decay, shelter and slow transformation. In this world of moss beds and insect trails, where time is measured in cycles rather than progress, care is not abstract—it is atmospheric, instinctual and shared. Her practice reminds us that the undergrowth is not beneath us, but part of us: a site of ancestral memory, feminist intuition and ongoing renewal.
Text by: Becky Forsythe and Þórhildur Tinna Sigurðsdóttir.
Photos by: Vikram Pradhan