BLIND SPOT

Reykjavík City Library, Iceland 

The group exhibition Blind spot opens on March 13th in conjunction with the European Action Week Against Racism. Blindspot curated by Daría Sól Andrews (IS), is a exhibition series in which the artists´ work will be experienced at various library locations. It presents film, photography, and installation work by Salad Hilowle (SE), Nayab Ikram (FI), Hugo Llanes (IS) and Claire Paugam (IS).

The works in this exhibition explore a personal angle on racism and exclusion within a European and Scandinavian context. The artists in this exhibition offer a unique perspective on their lived experiences as well as a place of confrontation, a potential to shift our viewpoints. Microaggressions, cultural exclusion, gender inequality, and systemic racism are conversations that are uncomfortable, avoided, overlooked; we place these confronting realities in a personal blindspot. And yet, the simple fact is that systemic racism and gender biases are all too present in our institutions, in our everyday relations, and in our implicit, unconscious gestures. This exhibition and the European Action Week Against Racism is therefore an opportunity for us as a community to come together and acknowledge the spaces in which we need to represent and protect our minority groups. How can our institutions begin to combat their built in privileges and racisms and take actual steps towards accountability? Anti-racist policies and active acknowledgement of implicit biases within gender and race are the first necessary step.