MAGIC

A rare convergence of feminist film and mythic gesture.

In September 2025, marvaða presented MAGIC. The works in this program—Volcano Saga, 1989, by Joan Jonas, Women and Smoke, 1971-1972, by Judy Chicago, and Hex, 2025, by Katrín Helga Andrésdóttir & Sóley Stefánsdóttir—are bound by a shared invocation of magical thinking as an artistic method. Each work reclaims ritual, myth, and enchantment as strategies for making sense of lived experience.

Joan Jonas draws on Icelandic sagas to stage a dreamlike vision where prophecy and landscape merge; Judy Chicago choreographs smoke and colour as a feminist rite that transforms the atmosphere into a temporary temple; Katrín and composer Sóley conjure a contemporary hex, weaving sound, gesture, and cinematic spell into a form of resistance. Across generations, these artists demonstrate how magic—once dismissed as superstition—remains a potent language for re-imagining identity, community, and our relation to the forces that shape us.

The opening of MAGIC featured a screening of all three works, followed by a conversation between HEX writer and director Katrín Helga Andrésdóttir, composer and creator Sóley Stefánsdóttir, and curator Arnbjörg María Danielsen, with a closing DJ set.

Documented by Vikram Pradhan