Bjargey Olafsdottir Born in 1972 in Reykjavik (Iceland), lives and works in Iceland. Bjargey Olafsdottir is one of a new generation of Icelandic artists who are working across lens-based media and performance. In her short film False teeth ( false teeth m. hallandi stofum) (2000), she tells the story of a young and elegant dentist, who divides her time between flying around her apartment and studying lurid pictures of decaying teeth. She has a boyfriend, as elegant and good-looking as herself, but he suspects that she is interested in him only because of his teeth. Olafsdottir has constructed a scenario in which obsession and fantasy are an integral part of the life of the young , modern woman. She is free to study or to fly; however the mood takes her. The insecurities of her boyfriend seem part of some other and more archaic world, separated irredeemably from the freewheeling dreams of a life defined by energy and intellectualism. In her series of photographs, Bedlam (hallandi stafir) (2001). Bjargey Olafsdottir makes portraits of her friends as the lie among the rumpled detritus of their bedrooms. They are like broken dolls scattered among the ruins of domesticity, abandoned in the delirium of sleep. In this small country with its young population and its burgeoning art scene, there is a feeling of endless possibilities. Artists gather and photograph each other; groups form and projects develop heedless, for a while at least, of the outside world. There are no "natural wonders" in their work, no steaming pools or outlandish rocks, for this is an urban and sophisticated arena, the international society of the young and well-educated, who treat life as a comedy or a fantasy, an absurdist collection of people and events. If it is Bedlam (hallandi stafir), then it is a kinder place than the term would suggest with its connotation of insanity and havoc. Yet for all this, there is a sense of the sinister in Olafsdottir´s work. The decaying teeth in the young woman´s dentistry manuals are ugly and speak of the degradation of the flesh, the inevitability of infection and disease. The sleeping people in Bedlam (hallandi stafir)(2001) could just as well be victims of some terrible crime, and the chaos which surrounds them might be the work of some wilful and destructive burglar rather then the carelessness of youth. There are questions posed in all of these works, about our preconceptions about what we see, about the mediums of film and photography, narrators of the real yet consummate creators of fiction. In her series of photogaphs, and in her films, Bjargey Olafsdottir writes peculiar narratives, contstructs strange performances and bizarre plots. As her audience, we are complicit in her aesthetic exercise; we read the signs, know the symbols and navigate the plot. (Val Williams)