Snorri Ásmundsson

Text: Helga Thórsdóttir, curator of Interloper.

The artist Snorri Ásmundsson is infuriating, he refuses to stand in the same queue as us, he doesn’t heed obsolete hierarchies created by tired systems by even more tired self-appointed guardians of these same systems. He usually addresses the manifestations of POWER, wherever that may stem from. Therefore, Snorri has been outlawed by those who believe in the holiness of the church, those who have converted to a political belief, and he is considered attention-seeking because of his candidacy for president in 2004, but above all, Snorri is very good at irritating the elite, especially those within the art world. In his novel The Joke, Milan Kundera writes that down-trodden values and a deception that has been exposed look exactly the same, that they are similar and can easily be mistaken for the other. This observation by Kundera perfectly frames Snorri’s art; he is always exposing cultural values and the deceptive narratives that we humans are so keen to tell ourselves, until we start believing the deception. But that is when Snorri appears, casting the sharp, white light of truth on the topic he chooses to address at each given time.

In the second volume of Íslensk listasaga [Icelandic Art History], published in 2011, Æsa Sigurjónsdóttir says: “Very particular cultural and political demands were made regarding the role of art in Icelandic society and the status of the artist in the nation-state. When Listvinafélag Íslands held an exhibition in 1919, the exhibition’s creator, Guðmundur Finnbogason, said in his opening address that the role of the artist was both spiritual and political because art was meant to be “in the interest of the nation”.” These are exactly the values that Snorri Ásmundsson addresses with his entire body of work, he presents such a realistic picture that we, the viewers, think that he is joking. We believe that Snorri is a joker who doesn’t need to be taken seriously. After all the man has no formal education from art universities or any other educational institution. That may very well be the key to the actual sincerity of the artist, where life is exactly as it is breeds artwork that is often produced by news media. What is more real than news for a generation that grew up without the concept ‘fake news’?

Harpa Þórsdóttir, the former director of the National Gallery of Iceland, writes a short passage about the artist Snorri Ásmundsson in Íslensk listasaga, vol. V, 2011. There she talks about the mediatization of art and believes that Snorri has developed an ‘alter-ego’ for the purpose of candidacy, claiming that he appears dressed in a royal blue suit, as an “equal” of other candidates, for instance in the run for the office of the President of Iceland. Harpa insists that Snorri’s game offers a type of absurdism, because even though Icelander’s do not hold many things sacred, there is a consensus that running for the highest office should be treated with respect. It is obvious that Harpa thinks that Snorri is playing games, but that is not the case; the artist is very serious, he wants to become president of the Icelandic republic. He lives in a constant state of mindfulness and did so long before most Westerners realised what that was. It is possible that Snorri ran too early for the presidential office in 2004, that the public simply wasn’t ready to get behind a person who stands outside of all elite systems. Later, or in 2016, the artist Elísabet Jökulsdóttir, was a candidate in the presidential elections. There are similarities between her and Snorri’s art, as they are both sincere and use their sincerity for good. Elísabet’s candidacy was taken much more seriously than Snorri’s, maybe because she spoke about children and women, a formula that was successful for former president Vigdís Finnbogadóttir. The three of them are all artists.

To sit within yourself without elevating your soul to flight and looking at yourself from the outside, as politicians such as Davíð Oddson do, is rather unusual for us the onlookers of screens, and therefore Snorri may seem like a harmless prankster. In his Poetics, Aristotle says that poets strive to imitate people in active life, and so the art of fiction must either be about people of the better or the worse kind, as people are morally categorized, for they are either of a good or evil nature. Furthermore, Aristotle says that the difference between tragedy and comedy is that the former seeks to depict greater people while the latter depicts lesser people than we are used to. If Snorri is the joker the public believes him to be, he is obviously showing that lesser people can make claims on great roles and offices. That is why those who feel they are entitled, or those who admire those who feel they are entitled, to take responsibility on behalf of the nation, visual art, music, aesthetics, and kindness, find the artist Snorri Ásmundsson unbearably irksome. 

Snorri’s creations and actions are created where he stands and rest in himself. Thus, his imagery is not fiction or a well fed ‘alter-ego’. The artist has not an iota of acting talent. For this reason, it is fair perhaps to maintain that Snorri is the most grandiose living work of art in Icelandic art history. In fact, Snorri can only be compared to the British artists Gilbert and George, who perform their own life as living sculptures, where the material is the British persona and the semiology surrounding that identity. What you see is Snorri Ásmundsson’s contribution to art, to the Icelandic nation and to the world. Æsa Sigurjónsdóttir stated that artists made great demands on themselves in the former part of the 20th century to lead the nation into the future. The artist was supposed to be a pioneer, a discoverer, and a visionary, a spiritual beacon, dismantling the old and obsolete and pointing to the new things on the horizon. It is fair to maintain that the values that Æsa lists are Snorri’s guiding lights in life and art. He has worked as a spiritual guide, a psychic yogi, a pioneer in time-based art, equally skilled as a singer and as a pianist, an artist who certainly strives to break down the old and the obsolete while persistently pointing our new ways and what is to come.

The artist Snorri Ásmundsson is not a man of doubt, he fundamentally believes in his own contribution and capabilities for good in the world. Therefore, it is not possible to compare his work to performances such as made by Silvía Nótt, Johnny National, or Ali G. The difference is in the artist’s attitude towards the performance, is it imitating life or is life being developed, like in Snorri’s case? In other words, Silvía Nótt, Johnny National, and Ali G. are performing fiction as reality, while Snorri is preforming actuality in reality.