“So I think that my inspiration is human behavior and the positivity of vanity.”
Of the significance of hair, she adds, “We constantly try to tame it and we have to make conscious, creative decisions all the time on what to do with it.” With a background in drawing and painting, Arnardóttir didn’t know just how crucial a role that synthetic hair would play in her art. “I think that hair snuck into the rest of my work. I didn’t realize that it would turn into this,” she says. “I didn’t mean for it to turn into this monstrosity.”
Initially she incorporated brown braids into her pieces. “Instead of drawing on paper, I was just going to use the physical material,” she says. “I started making murals, where I would place the braids and create this drawing with the patterns that are created when you do that.”
In part, Arnardóttir’s choice of material is reflective of her interest in the sheer volume of stuff that exists in this world. “Mass production of ridiculous things is fascinating to me, like a banana cutter or these ridiculous, nonsensical objects that are supposed to enrich our lives and make it easier, but it’s just an onslaught of stuff,” she says. Arnardóttir says that she likes to use materials that already exist in the world, perhaps recontextualizing them in the process. “Sometimes the original purpose is in the foreground, sometimes in the background,” she says.
The evolution of hair extensions in Arnardóttir’s work is an example of that. “Right now, the hair extensions have ceased to be so obviously hair extensions, but in the beginning I was doing braids out of brown hair extensions so that was referencing humans in that product,” she says. “Now, it’s become this onslaught of colors, texture and, frankly, a huge, analog, three-dimensional landscape painting in a way.”
I can make my own colors and it’s a richer color because when you come up close, you can see the different colors.”
In 2012, Arnardóttir created Nervescape, a site-specific installation for Clocktower Gallery in New York, that would alter her practice. Following that exhibition, museums across the world reached out for site-specific Shoplifter installations. She has made ten variations of Nervescape in the decade since that installation debuted.
In Shoplifter installations, hair provides the color and texture for environments that often look like landscapes from other worlds with brightly colored extensions pulled together into shapes that resemble plant life and rock formations.
Though Arnardóttir can order extensions in virtually any color she needs, she blends strands of hair together to create new colors. “I take royal blue and mix it with neon yellow and I get this crazy green color,” she explains. “I pluck it through, mash it with a tiny little crochet needle, also a reference to having your highlights in the ‘80s,” she explains.
It’s a process that’s also similar to mixing paints. “I started to really paint with it because I create the new shades myself by using the solid colors that I have,” she says. “I can make my own colors and it’s a richer color, because when you come up close, you can see the different colors.”
The process is labor intensive and time consuming, particularly considering the amount of installations Arnardóttir creates. In 2016, she started making two a year. Three years later, she had installations in Milan and Helsinki, in addition to her work for the Venice Biennale. Now she’s averaging two or three installations a year. With all those projects, Arnardóttir works with assistants who help braid and blend the extensions. “It would be impossible for me to create four thousand square feet of hair surface for these installations—three thousand square feet, four thousand square feet surface of hair—without help. So, I had to become really good at delegating some of the work,” she says.
But there is a drawback for Arnardóttir. “I started doing it because it was meditative, but a lot of the meditative process is now in the hands of assistants,” she says.
To date, the best known Shoplifter installation is Chromo Sapiens. A multi-sensory, 360-degree installation that fills three rooms, it was initially created for the Icelandic Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale. “I delivered exactly what I wanted to deliver and exactly what I envisioned, because I had been working with this material for so long and we collaborate so well at this point,” she says. “It does everything that I want it to do. I’ve become a master hair-tamer. Taming the beast.”