Charlotta Hauksdottir

Instagram: charlottamh

Website: http://www.charlottamh.com

Statement: Charlotta María Hauksdóttir is an award winning visual artist based in California, who uses photography, collage and mixed media in her work. Residing in the USA for over 20 years, she still draws inspiration from her home country Iceland. Her work centers around the unique connection one has to places and moments in time, and how memories embody and elevate those connections. Hauksdóttir received a BA in Photography from the Istituto Europeo di Design in Rome, Italy and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She also holds a Diploma in Creative and Critical Thinking from the Iceland Academy of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited around the world, with solo exhibitions in the USA, Russia, and Iceland as well as numerous group shows and photography festivals. Her photographs have been published in several magazines and books, as well as a monograph “A Sense of Place - Imprints of Iceland” published by Daylight Books that is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, SFMOMA, and Princeton among others. Hauksdóttir’s work is also part of numerous private and public collections such as Stanford Health Care and Reykjavik Museum of Photography. I was inspired to begin photographing the Icelandic landscape 20 years ago, after I moved to the United States and realized how closely my homeland was connected to my identity and sense of being. Starting out as an emotional response to the landscape I have over the years noticed changes and am now incorporating the effects of climate change into the work. By hand cutting the photographs and layering them in various patterns the removed parts of the images speak to these changes and the disappearing landscape. In some pieces glaciers have been cut out revealing black, suggesting their absence, and in others text on global warming represents the urgency of the situation. Using topography patterns, where visible layers overlap hidden ones, suggests erosion and suppression over time. The human biological patterns, such as those of fingerprints, retinal veins or brain circuits address our personal connection to nature and the responsibility for our impressions and impact. Recently I’ve been inspired by nature’s resilience, where grass can often be seen growing out of concrete cracks. In those pieces nature can be seen growing underneath indicating renewal and hope. I am also wrapping photographs around branches and weaving the landscape together to symbolize both the destruction and the ability to take action.