REYKJAVÍK.- i8 Gallery announced Hildigunnur Birgisdóttir's exhibition of new works at Mokka in Reykjavík. The exhibition, titled Wishing you the best on your birthday, will be on view from 20 June to 14 August 2024 and featuring multiple small-scale watercolour paintings recently made by the artist.

Birgisdóttir is known for her nuanced artistic practice, which looks critically at the global systems of production and distribution and the strange lives of the products they create. Her work draws attention to the small, disposable objects that are often the mass-produced accessories of material culture: packing materials, price tags, signage and systems of display. She casts these objects in new roles, changing their value and meaning entirely as they are experienced outside of their original function. The artist has said of her practice, “the unfortunate produce of consumerism is my material, and human systems are my tools.” She utilises the systems of global production to sculpt and create her pieces, folding the capacities and cultures of manufacturers, fabricators, commercial firms, shipping companies, and the pleasures and perils of internet searches into her artistic process.

Popular among poets and artists, Mokka is a small cafe in Reykjavík that opened in 1958 and features continuous visual art exhibition programming. This is Birgisdóttir's first exhibition at Mokka.

Hildigunnur Birgisdóttir (b. 1980, Reykjavík) lives and works in Reykjavík. Currently, Birgisdóttir represents the Icelandic Pavilion at the 60th Venice Art Biennale in Italy. In 2021, she was included in shows at Iceland's Reykjavik Art Museum, Reykjavík; the GES-2 House of Culture, the V-A-C Foundation, Moscow, Russia; and H2H, Athens, Greece. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Iceland, the Reykjavík Art Museum, and The Living Art Museum in Reykjavik, among others. Birgisdóttir graduated from the Iceland Academy of the Arts in 2003.