It is a cliché to talk about the small population of Iceland in relation to the nation’s achievements, whether in sports, in banking, or in the arts. Among the country’s numerous world records “per capita,” the art scene of Reykjavík could plausibly lay claim to being the most active of any capital city—if only there were some way to measure it.
The city’s various art museums and galleries offer eventful programs throughout the year. Because of the small scale of the Icelandic art community, exhibition openings can often resemble the fictional Boston bar “Cheers,” a place where everybody knows your name.
Art-making is also a relatively young profession in Iceland. Scholars sometimes joke about Icelandic art history beginning in the year 1900, when Þórarinn B. Þorláksson sailed back to Reykjavík from his studies at the Royal Danish Academy of Art and held the country’s first solo exhibition of Icelandic paintings.
Installation views from Hildigunnur Birgisdóttir’s, Peace (2022) at i8 Gallery, Reykjavík. Courtesy of the artist and i8 Gallery, Reykjavík.
It should come as no surprise that Þorláksson and other early 20th-century pioneers found their primary inspiration in nature. Much like Iceland’s diverse landscapes, these paintings defy homogeneity. They juxtapose serene sunny days and bright summer nights with rugged, windswept seascapes. Winter landscapes from this period are plentiful, and the country’s signature moss-covered lava fields are a recurring theme. The island’s top tourist attractions today—active volcanoes and the Northern Lights—also captivated the leading Icelandic painters of the last century.
Fast forward to Reykjavík in 2025, and you will find a bustling contemporary arts scene. “So many articles have been printed about Iceland where it is said that every other person is in a band or a writer or working in the cultural sector,” notes Hildigunnur Birgisdóttir, one of Iceland’s most prominent artists. Her Icelandic Pavilion exhibition at the 2024 Venice Biennale, That’s a Very Large Number — A Commerzbau, has now made its way to the National Gallery of Iceland, where it will be on view until September.
“We are a nation of what, 350,000? That is kind of like a single neighbourhood in New York,” Birgisdóttir continues. “We are tiny. But that holds a lot of opportunities. It’s great being small, because it offers you both the opportunity to keep a low profile and to get away with things that others might not.”
The tight-knit community means that, for better or worse, members tend to steer away from conflict. Icelandic artists do not experience the same sense of competition as their counterparts in other parts of the world, Birgisdóttir says, and readily collaborate for the sake of the wider art scene.
Birgisdóttir has been on the roster of i8 Gallery since 2017. Having maintained an ambitious exhibition program for 30 years, i8 has been a trailblazer in showcasing some of the country’s most influential contemporary artists while introducing international figures to Icelanders.
The Reykjavík gallery was “just a tiny hole in the wall” when mother-and-son gallerists Edda Jónsdóttir and Börkur Arnarson opened the original space at Ingólfsstræti 8 back in 1995, Arnarson says. At that time, he remembers, “there were a few spaces that artists could rent for exhibitions, but no one approaching artists in order to set up exhibitions. There wasn’t a single commercial gallery in the city.”
Despite the humble address, from which the gallery takes its name, Jónsdóttir and Arnarson did not set the bar low. Their vision was to exhibit cutting-edge new art that, more often than not, would be specially made for the space.
“We decided very quickly what we wanted to do. And half of our roster consists of artists that have been with us almost since the beginning,” Arnarson says. The inaugural show was devoted to works by Hreinn Friðfinnsson, a titan of Icelandic art history, “and then we exhibited many great artists in a row.”
Installation view from Studio Olafur Eliasson (2017-2021) in the Marshall House, Reykjavík. Courtesy of the artist and i8 Gallery, Reykjavík.
Roni Horn, Installation view, 2020, Courtesy of the artist and i8 Gallery, Reykjavík
Installation view from Hreinn Friðfinnsson’s Conduct 10 (2022) at i8 Gallery, Reykjavík. Courtesy of the artist and i8 Gallery, Reykjavík.
Friðfinnsson co-founded the SÚM group, which paved the way for performance and conceptual art in the 1960s and influenced an entire generation of Icelandic artists. His fellow SÚM members Sigurður and Kristján Guðmundsson have also been intertwined with the history of i8 for decades. Over the years, many international names have found their way into the roster, including Roni Horn, Lawrence Weiner, Ólafur Elíasson, and Ragnar Kjartansson.
The gallery has also expanded beyond its namesake address, moving in 2010 to a central location near Reykjavík harbor, one of the busiest ports in Iceland. It is a stone’s throw from Hafnarhús, the former warehouse building of Reykjavík Art Museum, which recently hosted an exhibition paying tribute to the late Friðfinnsson.
Stepping into the spotlight in 2025 is another i8 artist: Kjartansson’s multi-channel video installation World Light will be screening at the museum until late September. The 2015 piece is a cinematic adaptation of an epic novel by the Nobel Prize-winning Icelandic writer Halldór Laxness. Starring Kjartansson along with his family and friends from the artistic field, it is a testament to the cooperative spirit of the Icelandic art scene.
Yui Yaegashi, current judgement, 2023 oil on canvas, Courtesy of the artist and i8 Gallery, Reykjavík
Meanwhile, Kjartansson is the latest artist to show at i8’s experimental second location, i8 Grandi. The gallery’s annual program launched in 2022 in the Marshall House, a buzzing harborside cultural center in a renovated herring factory, where artists are invited to present a solo exhibition that will evolve over the course of a full year.
New Yorkers will have the chance to participate in the ever-evolving story of i8 this May when the gallery brings a taste of its eclectic program to the city as part of Independent. On view will be the signature abstract paintings of Japanese artist Yui Yaegashi, the newest addition to the gallery’s roster, with their graphic lines framing delicate swathes of color.
Grétar Þór Sigurðsson is an Icelandic journalist at RÚV, the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service. He holds a BA in Art History and Theory from the University of Iceland and is currently completing an MA in Art History and Art Theory at the University of Iceland and Stockholm University.
