Born in 1961 in Denmark, she lives and works in Reykjavík. She studied at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts, Reykjavík, the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, earned an MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloom eld Hills, MI, as well as an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University, New Haven, CT, in the USA. She has received numerous awards, including the Order of the Falcon by the President of Iceland for her contribution to visual art in Iceland in 2018 and the prestigious Richard Serra Award in 2005. She is currently a professor of Fine Art at Iceland University of the Arts, Reykjavík.
She has made several permanent works in public spaces, sculptures, 3D animation, photography and installations. In her work Nordal deals with Icelandic history and the collective memory of a nation in a critical and analytical way. Her artistic research has been focused on the self-identity of a nation in postcolonial times, the origin and the reflection of national motifs in the present and the fragment as a mirror into the past. The presentation of animal specimens as well as the fascination with the monstrous are at play in Nordal’s photographs and sculptures. Her work continues to explore the folkloric traditions surrounding Icelandic nature, as well as those scienti c practices that, in their seeking to preserve and display nature, also fictionalize it.
Selected exhibitions
2020 Lusus Naturae, University of Southern Maine Art Gallery, Portland, OR, USA
2019 Úngl Retrospective, Reykjavík Art Museum – Kjarvalsstaðir, Reykjavík
2018 Experiment on Turf. Earth Homing / Reinventing Turf Houses, Ráðagerði, Seltjarnarnes, Iceland
2016 Garefowl † Pinguinus Impennis: Extermination of a Species – Ultimate Samples, The Icelandic Museum of Natural History, Culture House, Reykjavík
2016 Viaggio sentimentale, Gallery Harbinger, Reykjavík