National festivals can be difficult in their often strange mixtures of exported clichés, purporting to advertise the presenting country as an exotic tourist destination with typically atypical food, habits and crafts. Authenticity is something the visitor doesn’t get and usually does not even expect. Authenticity, if it exists at all, is something one finds in the country itself, but hardly in its exported goods or performances. With the Bozar festival in Brussels it is different: the focus lies on Icelandic culture, and what one can see there is the cream of the crop from Icelandic music, film, literature and visual arts. And wherever you come across it, Icelandic art is always pristine.

The Center of Fine Arts in Brussels invites audiences until the end of April to discover the multifaceted Icelandic arts scene, in which the local and the traditional combine seamlessly with the cosmopolitan and the progressive. It seems that the curators even played with clichés in choosing the titles “Magicians of Nature” for one exhibition on three Icelandic painters or “Dreams of the Sublime and Nowhere” within a festival named “Iceland on the Edge”. And in fact, beyond possible skepticism about events that aim to promote a nation, this festival offers numerous opportunities to get in touch with exciting Icelandic culture of the past and the present.

Dreaming the “Dreams of Sublime and Nowhere” is the task of the exhibition that was realized in collaboration with the Reykjavík Art Museum and curated by Paris-based art historian Æsa Sigurjónsdóttir. The exhibition incorporates projects of about fifteen high-ranking artists of all generations and fields such as the concept artist Hreinn Fríðfinnsson, the video pioneer Steina Vasulka, the photographers Spessi, Pétur Thomsen, and Hrafnkell Sigurðsson, who presents both his photography and an installation wherein forces of weather are kept imprisoned in a greenhouse. The global artist Ólafur Elíasson presents a photo series of glaciers and Halldór Ásgeirsson an installation with melted stone. Sigurður Guðjónsson is showing one of his last videos, and Ragnar Kjartansson exhibits a special documentation of his famous constant performance that was a part of the Reykjavík Art Festival in 2005. One highlight is an impressive installation by Kristján Guðmundsson, who placed two gigantic rolls of paper in the middle of the room and let ink drop on them from a height of about two meters. Another is the new video by the Icelandic Love Corporation featuring the “Tent Lady”, a sculpture that is both a dress and a tent at the same time.

The exhibition, which will be shown in Reykjavík during the upcoming Arts Festival, questions the position of Icelandic artists, who grew up with unspoiled nature, within the Western neo-romantic longing for communion with nature.

“Dreams of Sublime and Nowhere” gives an impression of the wide spectrum of Icelandic art activity. The second exhibition, curated by Halldór Björn Runólfsson, Director of the National Gallery, is by contrast very quiet. The exhibition “Magicians of Nature” focuses on three Icelandic painters. The first, Jóhannes Kjarval (1885–1972), is said to be the father of modern Icelandic art. His translation of nature into his art is still unique and has very much inspired following generations of Icelandic artists. Kristján Davídsson (b. 1917) challenges age by continually seeking out new ways to tackle the flat surface. His daring as well as his remarkable energy is quite simply unique and his search for harmony brings forth ever new and unexpected facets of art. Finally, in the mid-1980’s, landscape painter Georg Gudni Hauksson (b. 1961) renewed a genre in decline, but with the historical and emotional understanding that allowed him to remain loyal to the authentic contemporary landscape he conveys precisely as a shadow in the night or the steam after a deluge.

These two exhibitions were meant to be completed by an impressive installation by Rúrí. In fact, this is the only very unfortunate chapter within this concept of the festival: the installation—entitled “Water Vocal – Endangered II”—aimed to turn the main hall of the Center of Fine Arts into a physical environment, dealing with the power of water and the fragility of its existence. The video installation was up for the opening days but was subsequently taken down. The reasons for that are unclear: Bozar’s website refers to technical problems; the understandably disappointed artist says that it was “evident that the institution lacked competence to both install and to exhibit the artwork in accordance with the contract.” While the festival lost with Rúrí’s installation a core piece, it has still enough to show. Rúrí’s fans on the continent will have to wait until October to see a comparable installation in St. Lucas Church in Munich.

Two very distinct exhibitions will open middle of April combining Iceland’s past with the present: First one is presenting the turbulent history of the island through ornamented drinking horns. The show which is realized in collaboration with the Icelandic National Museum is adequately called “Skál!”. Second one is introducing a big undertaking in Reykjavík: A new Concert and Conference Centre, designed by Henning Larsen and Ólafur Elíasson, is currently being constructed at the picturesque old harbour.

In addition to these exhibitions, a full program of concerts, lectures and performances will guarantee an exciting program.