Anna Líndal

2017, Expedition, Reykjavík Art Museum, Iceland

Material: embroidered maps on linen – mixed media?, 2017, ?height 320 cm / width: (white map 177cm) (blue map 156 cm) 23 pillars 30x30 cm

The work Leiðangur/Expedition addresses scientific tracking on land. In her work over the past 30 years, Anna has used the Grímsvötn caldera in the Vatnajökull glacier in Eastern Iceland as a symbol for Planet Earth. Embroidering the map on a piece of linen is a feminist statement. Cartography was the heritage of early explorers that were mostly men, mainly from politically dominant countries and women did not have the same right to land as men. This work is based on her personal experience of having taken part in 24 expeditions to the Vatnajökull Glacier since the 1990s, where she has observed scientists and non-scientists at work, measuring the ice and conducting a wide array of research. She has been participating in the research both as a member of the Iceland Glaciological Society and simultaneously conducting research for her own art practice. The mapping is connected to research that has been carried out while she has been on the glacier, by transferring information from scientists onto an embroidered map of the land. Hand-embroidered patterns on the map show lines tracked by foot while zigzag lines show tracking done by a motor vehicle. By following the lines, one can follow the glacier’s reaction to eruptions.

The lines are formed when the land is tracked to record the glacier and the rock beneath it. Working with scale – personal diary entries and new technology which influences the whole earth. By 2001, each and every millimeter of the planet had been mapped by satellites – a fact of historic importance that changes our perception of the earth. Scientific measurements of the Grímsvötn caldera develop alongside technological innovations occurring around the world. The Grímsvötn caldera is not large when seen from space, but rather an infinitesimal unit that is nonetheless an independent natural system – a miniature model of the earth itself.