D53 Kristín Helga Ríkharðs­dóttir: The Smooth Operator

The Smooth Operator is a new video-installation where we follow a woman in pursuit of absolute smoothness of her legs. This gradually develops into an obsession and an unexplained fear of short, dark hairs. The work takes on a form that is both attractive and unsettling. Through absurd humor, hair-like textures, and obsessive attention to feet, beauty rituals acquire an almost supernatural quality, driven by a belief in transformation.

Kristín Helga Ríkharðsdóttir (b. 1993) works across multiple media, translating ideas drawn from her own experiences, stories, and everyday objects into diverse forms. Through painting, photographs, sculpture, video, and sound, she engages with the hyperreality of everyday life and examines the tension between the natural, the man-made, and the staged. Kristín seeks to reflect the world we inhabit, where distinctions between reality and fiction are increasingly blurred.

Kristín Helga Ríkharðsdóttir graduated from the Fine Arts Department of the Iceland University of the Arts in 2016 and participated in an exchange program at the Universität der Künste in Berlin, where she also completed an internship after graduation. In 2019, she moved to New York to pursue an MFA in Studio Art at New York University, completing the program in January 2022.

Her works have been exhibited widely, both in Iceland and internationally, including at Gerðarsafn, Hafnarborg, The Living Art Museum, Þula Hafnartorg, and 80WSE in New York. In the summer of 2024, she was invited to participate in a studio residency at ISCP in New York through the Icelandic Art Center. Her films have received awards at film festivals, and a music video by her was nominated for the Icelandic Music Awards in 2019.

She has received numerous grants and recognitions, including a grant and fellowship from the Leifur Eiríksson Foundation (2020–2021), a grant from the Guðmunda Andrésdóttir Fund in 2020, a grant from the Scandinavian Foundation in 2019, and a scholarship for promising students from Landsbankinn in 2021.