The Visitors

This is a nine-channel video installation featuring musicians performing in different rooms of a historic mansion. The piece encapsulates themes of togetherness, melancholy, and the poetic repetitiveness of life.

A Lot of Sorrow

A six-hour live performance with The National, where the band played their song "Sorrow" continuously. It explores the concept of endurance and the emotional weight of repetition. As hours pass, the emotional impact of the lyrics changes.

World Light - The Life and Death of an Artist

Based on an unfinished novel by Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness, this four-channel video performance captures the essence of the “suffering artist” trope in real-time.

Me and My Mother

A series of videos filmed every five years, where Kjartansson and his mother perform the same scripted actions. It offers an intriguing look at the passage of time and familial relationships.

God

A performance where Kjartansson, dressed as a 1950s lounge singer, repeatedly croons the line, "Sorrow conquers happiness." It’s both ironic and deeply emotional.

The End

A six-month performance at the Venice Biennale where Kjartansson and fellow musicians lived in a decaying palazzo, continually creating art and music. It’s an absurd look at the creative process.

Death Is Elsewhere

A seven-channel video installation that focuses on two pairs of twins playing guitars in a field of wildflowers. It dives into the dual themes of life’s beauty and impending mortality.

Santa Barbara

The work serves as an homage to the American soap opera "Santa Barbara," which aired in post-Soviet Russia, blending nostalgia with cultural and historical layers from both eras and places.

Figures in Landscape

A single-channel video piece that unfolds over seven scenes, each lasting 24 hours, requiring a week for full engagement. The work is a celebration of humanism, infused with elements of classical theater like pathos and humor.