Island Zombie

Book excerpt: "Roni Horn (b. 1955) is a prominent contemporary artist known for her sculptures, photography, and installations inspired by landscape and the natural world, and especially the isolated landscapes of Iceland, where she has travelled and lived for substantial periods of time since the early 1970s. Horn's work explores geology and climate; the interplay of nature, art, and place; and the relationships between words, appearance, androgyny, and the self. Horn is author of more than twenty books and artist's books, and is herself the subject of more than thirty books and exhibition catalogs, including a survey published by Phaidon and many by Steidl. Examples of her work include You Are the Weather (1994-96), a series of photographs of a young woman bathing in Icelandic hot springs; Pair Objects (1988), identical metal sculptures placed in two different locations; and the installation Library of Water (2007) in Iceland, with columns that enclose water from melting glaciers. Horn is arguably the most important visual chronicler of the landscape of Iceland. Upon graduating from her MFA program at Yale, she traveled to Iceland, journeying across its interior on a motorcycle. Over thirty years, she has continually returned to Iceland to explore and record the astonishing beauty of its geology, climate, and culture. This book will contain a range of texts, from evocative vignettes to illustrated essays written for Iceland's most widely-read newspaper. A combination of artists' writings and travelogue, the texts reveal Iceland as one of Horne's most important influences and inspirations, and record a unique and beautiful environment undergoing climate change"--