Mariella is a multi-disciplinary artist from Scotland. Next year, she plans to undertake studies to become an art therapist. She seeks to spotlight the mundane, and to bridge narratives between tradition, folklore, and her reality. Mariella’s work inspires to show that when stripped down, life is absurd and nonsensical. During her Fish Factory residency, Mariella…

Alex M. Stein is an award winning writer and filmmaker living in Los Angeles. Alex stayed at the Fish Factory in November 2024. Alex wrote short stories and shared them at our exhibition at the end of the month in the green room upstairs. During the month, he delighted us with positive energy and good…

Clio Berta is a Maine based performance artist, composer and event producer inspired by snakes, esoteric mysticism, constructed identity, cycles and nothingness. She works with movement, projected video, paint and the natural landscape to explore these ideas in an intimate, multi dimensional way. Clio spent her time at the Fish Factory researching, writing about and…

Hester Aspland is an illustrator and ceramicist based in Scotland. Her work is inspired by nature, folklore and history, which is explored through ink drawings, ceramics and sketchbook work. The landscapes of Scotland are a particularly large source of inspiration, so having the opportunity to come to Iceland was a dream come true. She spent…

Jane Beguchaya, a Russian/Tatar artist, stayed in Fish Factory in September 2023. She reflects on her residency experience, saying, “If I’ll say that it was a special experience, it would be not enough. To be honest, it is not easy to find the words. Month already gone since the day I came back home but…

Nancy is a Professor of Environmental History at Michigan Technological University. She is the author of five books on climate history, Great Lakes history, forest and wetland history, and toxics history. Nancy spent the month of September with us while she worked on her paintings, watercolours, linocuts, prints and collages. She experimented with these different…

Lula Asplund is a Chicago based sound artist and musician who combines digital and analog sound synthesis with tape manipulation, field recordings, and vocal manipulation in her practice. Lula’s time at Fish Factory consisted of going on long walks, taking photographs, field recordings, recording electro-magnetic sounds of the lighthouses, reading Clarice Lispector, and recording with…

Madeleine Aleman is a visual artist from Malmö, Sweden. She stayed with us in the month of September 2023. Since 2012, her art practice focuses mainly on drawing, printmaking, and performance. Aleman is strongly influenced by psychology and spirituality. Hypnagogic states and dreams are important sources of inspiration. “During my residency stay, I was totally…

Susan Singer is a writer and an artist. The first time she landed in Keflavik was in 2014. That inspired her to sign up for different residencies, where she worked with photography and with pastels. At the Fish Factory, she experimented with watercolour, and she worked plein air as much as possible, taking inspiration from…

Kathryn Mohr is an artist and a musician currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She spent the month August here at the Fish Factory, working on music. She set up a desk in our green room upstairs, with beautiful view over the opening of the fjord. Kathryn liked to stroll near the sea,…

Eva is a graphic designer and illustrator based in Barcelona, Spain. Her work during the residency, in August, was inspired by the local fauna and landscape with a layer of fantasy extracted from Icelandic folk tales mixed with witchy popular culture and personal anecdotes of her travels. She also took the opportunity given to focus…

Julia Hechtman is a visual artist who lives and works in Boston, USA. Julia makes works focusing on the balance of absence and presence, life and death, and real-time and memoried experience in her multi-faceted studio practice. The natural world features prominently in her works, which has allowed her to travel extensively and to contemplate…

Introducing Gabriele Glang, a German-American artist and bilingual poet from southern Germany, who spent the month of August at the Fish Factory. All her life, she has practiced both painting and writing, her creative work comprising both the visual and the literary. “The artist’s book is the perfect medium for me: a marriage between the…

Meet Gabi Maynard, an artist and digital creator. She stayed with us in August. “I recently completed my digital media studies at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, focusing on graphic design. Although I’ve created a lot of digital work, I still have a strong passion for traditional, analog media. Initially I was planning on…

Introducing Daisy Allen, an artist born and bred in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Daisy currently works in London, where her creative practice includes photography, illustration, art direction, and painting murals. We got to know Daisy in July, when she was here with only one other artist. She used this time to work on her personal projects,…

Edie is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Cornwall, UK. Her work shifts between film and animation to installation and costume for live performance. ‘I was drawn to the extreme, remote landscapes and harsh climates of Iceland, which have shaped the century-old mythology and its need for story. I used my two months in the…

Suzanne Yeremyan is a visual artist with a focus in experimental mixed-media abstraction. During her attendance in the month of March, Suzanne spent the days outdoors and in the landscape, taking advantage of the fleeting window of daylight. Walking, searching, and observing is a crucial part of her process. Upon evening, she would then enter…

Uncertain Studio is made up of Taiwanese artists Tao Chiang and Yen-Ting Tseng (a.k.a. Kappa). Coming from a theatre design background, they combine Tseng’s experiments in object theatre with Chiang’s ambient and aleatoric soundscapes to create spatial works that act as both performance and installation pieces. In their earlier collaborations, dramatic characters are replaced by…

We are introducing Gabe Duggan, an artist whose works bridge the realms of creativity and emotion. Gabe’s creations move boundaries, as they invite us to look at ordinary things with different eyes. Gabe’s versatility is shown through different mediums and techniques, and textile and technology provide a reliable foundation for Gabe’s work. While at the Fish Factory, Gabe…

Eve is a visual artist from Rotherham, now based in Manchester. While at the Fish Factory, she explored Icelandic folklore and embodied creatures such as the Huldufólk by creating masks and incorporating local and natural materials into a full-body outfit. She is fascinated by masks and performance, and she brought the roots of ancient stories…

Introducing Violet Roest, a visual artist from the Netherlands. Her creative journey delves into the realms of emotion, colour, and expression. She spent the month of June here with us in Stöðvarfjörður, but she’s been to this little village, before anyone thought of recording music, spinning pottery wheels, and painting portraits in the middle of a…

Kukka Pitkänen is a Finnish visual artist working mainly in the field of printmaking and drawing, and during the residency, she worked on drawings, photographing and printmaking techniques. Her works are often connecting human and nature, and in Fish Factory she focused on a lot of nature detail research, which she transferred to her drawings.…

Rhonda Rosenheck is an emerging poet, writer and biblical translator. Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies and have been performed live. She lives in rural New York State, USA. While at the Fish Factory, she worked on a translation project, and she delighted us with witty poems and ingenious verses. Rhonda offered her fellow…

Selena Unger is a multi-disciplinary artist currently based on Vancouver Island, Canada. She creates ceramic and paper mache sculptures, drawings, paintings, poetry, and installations. Her work explores psychological phenomena as well as philosophical queries in a playful and colourful way that invites viewers to engage curiously in her chimerical constructions. While at the Factory Selena…