O ZMIERZCHU
I ŚWICIE

Mikhail Pletnev, 2017. Fot. Russian National Orchestra, CC BY-SA 4.0. Converted to black and white.

EVENT

Mikhail Pletnev - Piano Recital

One of the most distinguished pianists of his generation, Mikhail Pletnev will give a recital at Eldborg Hall in Harpa on 19 October. The Russian pianist, conductor and composer, who won the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1978, is renowned for his strikingly individual approach to interpretation and extraordinary freedom at the keyboard. The recital programme brings together preludes and fugues from Johann Sebastian Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, Robert Schumann's Kreisleriana, Op. 16, and a selection of Edvard Grieg's Lyric Pieces. 19 October 2026, 20:00 Harpa, Eldborg Hall, Reykjavík

Heimaey, Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland, 2025. Photo: Marta Kępska.

PLACE

VESTMANNAEYJAR Iceland

An archipelago of 15 islands off Iceland’s south coast, with Heimaey as its only permanently inhabited island. Its landscape was dramatically reshaped by the 1973 Eldfell eruption, when lava and ash destroyed hundreds of buildings and forced almost the entire population to evacuate. Today, volcanic slopes rise directly above the town, while steep sea cliffs are home to one of the world’s largest puffin colonies. Vestmannaeyjar is a place where the geological history of Iceland is not something preserved in the landscape - it is still part of everyday life.

Time and Water, official key art. Courtesy of National Geographic Documentary Films.

FILM

Time and Water

Academy Award-nominated director Sara Dosa returns with Time and Water, a documentary set against Iceland's changing landscape. The film follows Icelandic writer and environmentalist Andri Snær Magnason as he confronts the disappearance of the country's glaciers while exploring his family history and the memories embedded in the land. Blending a personal story with reflections on time, loss and climate change, the film asks how we say goodbye to something we never thought we could lose.

Jóhannes S. Kjarval, 1934. Photo: Willem van de Poll / Nationaal Archief, CC0

ART

Jóhannes S. Kjarval. Kjarval in the East

One of Iceland’s most celebrated - and most frequently forged - artists. Jóhannes S. Kjarval travelled across East Iceland, returning to places he had known since childhood and translating its landscapes onto canvas. Mountains, lava fields and rock formations were combined with his own imagination, symbolism and stories of elves and huldufólk from Icelandic folklore. Kjarval in the East presents works created between 1919 and 1960, in which real places in East Iceland meet symbolism, the artist’s imagination and stories drawn from Icelandic folklore.

Marina Abramović, Long Life, Short Stories, book cover. Courtesy of Rizzoli Electa.

BOOK

Marina Abramović - Long Life, Short Stories

One of the most influential figures in performance art tells the story of her life through short narratives, memories and drawings. Published to mark her eightieth birthday, the book combines elements of a sketchbook, diary and personal collection of reflections. Love, loss, sex, nature, family and ageing appear alongside experiences that have shaped Abramović's artistic practice over the decades. Rather than a chronological autobiography, it is an intimate portrait built from fragments, observations and images.

Poster design: Marta Kępska

EVENT

LEAKY BODIES, SHARED WORLDS

For the first time, the Bunkier Sztuki Collection in Kraków will be presented in Iceland. The exhibition at Reykjavík Art Museum - Hafnarhús brings together photographs, paintings, objects and installations by thirty contemporary Polish artists. Taking the body as its point of departure, the exhibition explores its fragility, mutability and shifting boundaries, and the ways in which they are shaped by nature, culture, technology and social expectations.

Cover: The Bodley Head / Penguin Random House

BOOK

A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides. Gisèle Pelicot

A personal testimony of reclaiming her voice after years of abuse and a trial that was followed around the world. The story of a woman who chose to give up her anonymity and publicly confront what she had endured. An account of dignity, freedom and rebuilding a life on her own terms. It also challenges the way society speaks about victims of sexual violence - and insists that shame belongs to the perpetrators, not those they have harmed.

© Transmission Films

FILM

TWIGGY. Sadie Frost

A documentary portrait of Twiggy - one of the most recognisable faces of the 1960s. The film traces her rapid rise in the fashion world, her beginnings in London and her later work in film, theatre and music. Archival material and contemporary interviews reveal not only a style icon, but also the woman behind an image that came to define an era. It is also a story about changing ideas of fashion, culture and the representation of women in the media.

Photo: Sigurður Guðjónsson, Veil, 2012.

EVENT

SIGURÐUR GUÐJÓNSSON - VEIL

Sigurður Guðjónsson, an Icelandic artist working across video, sound, installation and sculpture, focuses on movement, materiality and processes unfolding in both nature and technology. In 2022, he represented Iceland at the Venice Biennale with Perpetual MOTION. The exhibition Veil at the National Gallery of Iceland presents his monumental video work filmed on the black sands of Skeiðarársandur. In a single, uninterrupted sixty-minute take, Guðjónsson records the wind carrying successive layers of sand towards the horizon. The continuous loop draws attention to the movement of the landscape, the passage of time and the constant transformation of matter. The work will be presented at full scale on a large screen.

Photo. Marta Kępska / O Zmierzchu i Świcie

PLACE

Siglufjörður, Iceland

Hidden between steep mountains and a narrow fjord in northern Iceland, Siglufjörður was once at the heart of the country’s herring industry. The boats, factories and crowds are gone, but their traces remain in the harbour, old wooden buildings and former industrial spaces. Today, the town exists in a different rhythm - shaped by the sea, shifting northern light and the memory of what once made this remote fjord one of Iceland’s busiest places

The Love That Remains”, reż. Hlynur Pálmason, 2025. Materiały prasowe: New Europe Film Sales.

FILM

THE LOVE THAT REMAINS Hlynur Pálmason

Anna is an artist, Magnús a fisherman. They are raising three children in rural Iceland, but their marriage is beginning to fall apart. Hlynur Pálmason observes what remains of a shared life when love does not disappear with the end of a relationship - attachment, memory, intimacy, and the everyday life one cannot simply walk away from. An intimate portrait of a family unfolding through Iceland’s changing seasons.

Virginia Evans, The Correspondent, Crown, 2025. Cover image courtesy of Penguin Random House.

BOOK

The Correspondent - Virginia Evans

A New York Times bestseller and winner of the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Seventy-three-year-old Sybil Van Antwerp has always written letters - to family, friends, and sometimes to people who would rather not hear from her. Through this correspondence emerges a story of memory, loss, and relationships that cannot be closed with a single goodbye.

Editorial graphic: O Zmierzchu i Świcie. Original exhibition image: James Merry, Greenman, 2017. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Tim Walker / National Gallery of Iceland.

EVENT

JAMES MERRY - METAMORPHLINGS

James Merry’s first museum retrospective brings together more than 80 works spanning masks, jewellery, embroidery and sculptural objects. Metamorphlings explores nature, archaeology and transformation across a decade of the artist’s practice.

Ennio Morricone at the Cannes Film Festival, 2007. Photo: Olivier Strecker / CC BY-SA 3.0.

EVENT

ENNIO MORRICONE - THE OFFICIAL SYMPHONIC EXPERIENCE

While filming Once Upon a Time in the West, Ennio Morricone’s music was already playing on set before shooting began. Sergio Leone played it for the actors, who moved to its rhythm. On 24 and 25 September at Eldborg, Morricone’s music will once again come before the image - this time performed by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra.

Exhibition poster: Ólafur K. Magnússon

EVENT

The Photographer Ólafur K. Magnússon.

Ólafur K. Magnússon documented Icelandic life over decades, photographing people, streets, work and landscapes as the country changed around him. The exhibition in Reykjavík brings these images together as more than a photographic archive - they are a record of a society in transition, somewhere between the Iceland of the past and the country we know today.

Switzy, Emma Cline. Cover courtesy of Chatto & Windus.

BOOK

Switzy - Emma Cline

An aging David sets out on his final journey across Europe. London, dinner with his daughter, France and an encounter with an old friend lead him towards his final destination - Zurich. As his memory begins to fail, the present gives way to fragments of the past. Switzy is a precise portrait of an unraveling consciousness, asking what remains of a person when memory, achievements and the story they have built around their life begin to disappear. Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2026.

Icelandic bride in traditional dress, c. 1850. Photo: Hansen, Schou & Weller / Nordiska museet. Public Domain.

EVENT

VAKA Folk Arts Festival

What happens when tradition stops being an exhibit and becomes a practice again? VAKA brings together artists, musicians and craftspeople who approach folk culture as a living language. Icelandic songs, dance and traditional instruments meet traditions from other parts of the world through concerts, shared music sessions, workshops and film screenings.

Fatherland, Paweł Pawlikowski. © Neue Visionen Filmverleih

FILM

Fatherland - Paweł Pawlikowski

Thomas Mann returns to Germany after sixteen years in exile, travelling through the devastated country with his daughter Erika. Their journey becomes a confrontation with family, identity and a homeland transformed by war. Shot in black and white by Łukasz Żal, Fatherland earned Pawlikowski the Best Director award at Cannes 2026.

Switzy, Emma Cline. Cover courtesy of Chatto & Windus.

BOOK

Switzy - Emma Cline

An aging David sets out on his final journey across Europe. London, dinner with his daughter, France and an encounter with an old friend lead him towards his final destination - Zurich. As his memory begins to fail, the present gives way to fragments of the past. Switzy is a precise portrait of an unraveling consciousness, asking what remains of a person when memory, achievements and the story they have built around their life begin to disappear. Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2026.

TREMORS, Odysseas Chloridis, 2026. Poster courtesy of Hafnar.space.

ART

Tremors - Odysseas Chloridis

Tremors brings together three photographic projects by photographer and visual artist Odysseas Chloridis. Working with photography, printmaking, collage and material intervention, he treats the photographic image as a physical object open to transformation. His work explores our relationship with nature, animism and the emotional dimension of human experience.