"I am a hybrid, and love my heritage, my Icelandic roots, connections with my mother and her family lineage.
Travelling, working in Iceland in 2013 seemed vital to learning more about the depths and mystery of my heritage through contact with the place my ancestors came from.
Lava and light became catalysts for my adventure and inspired, prompted subsequent work."
-Debora Alanna
"Through my childhood I was in the midst of ancient Icelandic influence progressing into myth and poetics through abstraction and figuration through my art, which I began to address in new work, in Iceland."
"In Iceland, lava fields are new and old. This is a photograph taken in an old moss covered lava field near where farmers keep horses. The summer green mounds are lush and flagrant in their barefaced exposure, manifesting the original, but worn lava undulations."
"A transition occurred in my work during the Akureyri residency. I began to leave the literal and mythologized concepts and work with ideas that translated the environment to new experiences, feelings, thoughts that had no previous definition.
These works became haptic spaces."
"Dwellings and especially the relationship people have to what they value, delving into time through narratives allows seeing, converting the tender tangibility of these poetic experiences into my work."
"When the mountain divides the sun and the moon
When the sun is held by the sky and the land"
When the sun is held by the sky and the land"
Icelandic Eye(s) was produced and fired in the glass studio at Punkturinn (the Point),
a community crafts facility.
Icelandic Eye(s)
Displayed on green velvet, 5 kiln fired glass slumped over hand carved moulds with lava centres formed Icelandic Eye(s).
Stage lighting arranged behind the installation further enhanced the work.
"Maybe it was the constant summer equinox light that triggered this work – perhaps the light component, the spheres of light within the work. Maybe it was being on ancestral land, going back and going forward in time the allowed the constructed waves above the main structure to vehemently undulate. Maybe it was the realisation of returning to a place held as a dream by my mother, grandparents that allowed the dream-like glow of the work..."
The World is Askew: Installation
"Special thanks to my family & all the friends & colleagues that encouraged me to embark on this residency adventure, promoted my project among their friends and colleagues to enable funding to travel, make work and show in Iceland."
