Wond­erland: Work in Progress with Sara Riel

In what way do we try to make sense of nature, categorize, define and claim it?

Sara's subjects span everything from flora and fauna to outer space and in her work she draws on exceptional craftsmanship and ingenuity to create compelling visual interpretations of pressing issues. At Ásmundarsafn, Sara will explore the inner landscape of the human being—emotions, brain waves, and neural signals—and examine how we encounter and process them. How do they take shape and become part of a shared experience?

She will examine how stimuli from the external environment can form knots, tangles and accumulations in our inner lives—and how such forms manifest in imagery, bodily experience, and language. The creative process itself takes center stage, not only as an outcome but as a method: a way to release inner tension and transform emotions into material form. Much of the process will take place at Ásmundarsafn, in open dialogue with visitors and in their presence.

Undraland is a project dedicated to the history of Ásmundarsafn. The building once served as the home and studio of the sculptor Ásmundur Sveinsson (1893–1982), which he designed himself and built between 1942 and 1950. The property stood at the edge of a meadow belonging to a farm called Undraland. Ásmundur bequeathed the house and his works to the City of Reykjavík upon his death, and in 1983 a museum was established there in his memory. During the four decades in which the artist worked in the building, it was a site of fertile artistic creation. Throughout 2025, artists are offered the opportunity to work in the house on works in progress or on artistic processes of any kind.

Sara Riel (b. 1980) studied visual art at the Iceland University of the Arts and at the Weißensee Academy of Art in Berlin, from which she graduated in 2006. She is well known for her large-scale murals in public spaces, while also having works in numerous museum collections and exhibiting widely both in Iceland and internationally.