Blirds

Blird is an installation with sculptures, text and sound. Ólöf Nordal has for long worked with bird images in her work which are often rooted in folklore, image building and contemporary culture. Blirds are bronze casts that portray figures in transformation. Their transition suggests morphing from human form to bird form, from the earthly to the spiritual. The Blirds belong to the world of the grotesque and the uncanny, but also refer to migrating birds who fly over the sea in the shape of a bird as well as in human form. The work is in dialogue with Nordal´s latest work Mannfuglar (2022), located in the garden of Móberg nursing home in Selfoss. In her work Ólöf Nordal deals with Icelandic history and the collective memory of a nation in a critical and analytical way. Her artistic research has been focused on the self-identity of a nation in postcolonial times, the origin and the reflection of national motifs in the present, and the fragment as a mirror into the past.