For the Pavilion of Iceland at the 55th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia in 2013, Katrín Sigurdardóttir has created a large-scale sculptural intervention titled Foundation for the Lavanderia—The Old Laundry at Palazzo Zenobio. The artist has created a floating platform covered by ornate, baroque-inspired tiles, measuring approximately 90 square meters. The outline of the architectural structure takes its form from the footprint of a typical 18th-century pavilion, intersecting both interior and exterior spaces of this auxiliary building.
The project is born from the artist’s career-long exploration of distance and memory, and their embodiments in architecture, urbanism, cartography, and landscape. After la Biennale di Venezia, the piece will travel to the Reykjavík Art Museum and then to the SculptureCenter in Long Island City, New York.
Upon entering the work, visitors will first climb the stairs leading from the garden to the platform, bending down to pass through the truncated doors of the building. Visitors can 2 also climb a second set of stairs to the roof of the building and look down on the sculpture’s large footprint and intricate patterns.
The size of this architectural piece dwarfs the building and addresses a familiar theme in Sigurdardóttir’s oeuvre, the playful manipulation of scale. Notably, Iceland lacks its own pavilion in the Giardini, and therefore the floating, disembodied structure of Sigurdardóttir’s sculpture serves as a metaphor for the outline of the national space.
The surface of the platform replicates artisanal tile construction and is handmade by the artist and her team. Sigurdardóttir chose to use art materials instead of traditional flooring materials to emphasize the understanding of the surface as a sculpture that the viewer wears down with every step.
Sigurdardóttir has worked with two curators in realizing the exhibition, Mary Ceruti and Ilaria Bonacossa. Ceruti is Executive Director and Chief Curator at SculptureCenter. Ilaria Bonacossa is the Director of Museo D’Arte Contemporanea Villa Croce in Genova, Italy.
