Shoplifter/Hrafnhildur Arnadóttir receives the 5th Elfi von Kantzow Alvin Art Award
Awarded to a woman visual artist with outstanding talent, vision and perseverance with strong ties to one of the 5 the Nordic countries.
Shoplifter/Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir is an Icelandic contemporary artist based in New York. She works with natural as well as brightly colored synthetic hair, creating soft, vibrant multi-colored sculptures, wall murals, and site-specific immersive installations. She learned hair work as a traditional craft from her grandmother, a highly personal, intimate, and often emotionally charged medium that adds layers of complexity to themes of vanity, self-image, beauty and popular myth. As one of Iceland’s leading artists, Shoplifter has garnered international recognition for her distinctive approach crossing boundaries within the spaces of art, design, and fashion, and most recently glass.
Born in Reykjavik, Iceland, when Arnardóttir moved to New York in 1994, her birth name was mispronounced as Shoplifter and she has gone by that name ever since. She has exhibited worldwide and collaborated with artists from various countries, including musician Björk, to develop the hair sculpture for the album Medúlla in 2004, and with AVAF for a large scale window installation at MoMA Museum of Modern Art, NY in 2008. She has also collaborated with brands such as Moncler, Comme des Garçons, & Other Stories. In 2019 she represented Iceland at La Biennale di Venezia with her multi-sensory large scale installation Chromo Sapiens which is on permanent display in her art center in Reykjavik, Iceland.
The Elfi von Kantzow Alvin Art Award is awarded to a woman visual artist with outstanding talent, vision and perseverance with strong ties to one of the 5 the Nordic countries. The Art Award honors and continues in the spirit of Elfi’s tireless efforts for Scandinavian artists and the Scandinavian community in New York for over 60 years. The Elfi Art Award program is chaired by her daughter, Anita Alvin Nilert.