Erla Thórarinsdottir is born in Reykjavik. She grew up in Iceland, Denmark and Sweden. Studied at Konstfack in Stockholm and Gerrit Rietveld Akademie in Amsterdam. Erla was an initiator in the Barbar era in early 80´s Stockholm.

She left for New York, where she breathed and worked for one and a half year,

before returning to the roots in Iceland where she operates.

​

Erla works with space, time and processes where memory, human context and

scale is integrated. Within her paintings she has used sheets of silver, building

light sensitive bodies and structures that exposed to light and time and whatever

is in the air, oxidize and transmute according to circumstances on site. In her art

the archaic is present, so is congeniality, and there is a need to communicate contemporaneously to the west and the east. Her practice incorporates painting, meditation, photography, textile design, stone works and installations. 

She has worked and exhibited in Scandinavia, North Europe, USA, China and India. 

​

​

RAUÐA KROSS TEPPI OG AÐRAR ÓSKIR Á TÍMA COVIDS / A RED CROSS BLANKET AND OTHER WISHES IN COVID TIMES — Exhibition at Portfolio Galleri 

in Reykjavik 2021. Text by Art historian Æsa Sigurjónsdóttir

​

 

IN OTHER WORDS ESSAY BY FRANK MATHEIS JULY 2020:

https://inspirationartgroup.org/essays/erla-thorarinsdottirs-majestic-forms-of-endlessness/

​

 

Conversation between Birta Gudjónsdottir and Erla Thórarinsdottir 

in July 2019 at Erla´s studio in Reykjavik: