With great anticipation, the National Gallery of Iceland and the Reykjavík Arts Festival announce that on the festival's opening day, May 30, 2026, exhibitions by Björk and James Merry will open at the museum. 

The exhibitions Ummyndlingar (Metamorphlings) and echolalia will take over all four galleries of the National Gallery of Iceland and will run throughout the summer until September 20, 2026.

James Merry : Metamorphlings

Metamorphlings is the first museum retrospective of the artist’s work. Comprising over 80 artworks, the exhibition offers a window into the evolution of Merry’s artistic output over the past decade. During this time, he has developed a body of work centered on the mask – operating as a conduit for transformation, a catalyst for performance, and a portal through which identity can mutate. The exhibition focuses on the moment of metamorphosis when form and self are fluid. 

The masks on view showcase Merry’s craftsmanship, which uniquely blends traditional techniques with contemporary, avant-garde expressions. Visitors encounter works in a range of mediums: embroidery, metalwork, 3D printing, jewelry, and interactive digital displays. Collectively, these works – the Metamorphlings – form a family of shape-shifting creations that can offer a deeper insight into Merry’s unending fascination with the natural world, as well as his abiding interest in archaeology and ancient ritual.

Many of the masks included in the exhibition were created for Björk Guðmundsdóttir as part of their long-standing artistic collaboration. The exhibition will also include commissions made for other notable collaborators, among them Tilda Swinton and Iris van Herpen. While many of these works have appeared in live performances and high-fashion contexts, this exhibition offers a rare opportunity to engage with them as standalone artworks. 

björk : echolalia

The National Gallery presents echolalalia, an exhibition of works by Björk, the visionary singer, songwriter, performer, and poet, whose work over the past five decades has consistently pushed beyond conventional musical boundaries, interweaving art, nature, and technology with restless experimentation. Echolalia focuses on Björk as the creative force behind multimedia projects she has developed in collaboration with communities of musicians, artists, designers, dancers, filmmakers, and studio technicians. In three immersive installations, the public is given a rare opportunity to engage intimately with works of phenomenal visual, aural, and emotional depth.

The first gallery contains a new installation pulled from Björk’s forthcoming album. The work offers an introduction to the latest chapter of the artist’s ongoing explorations of transformation and collaboration. 

Two elegiac works each command their own galleries. Ancestress and Sorrowful Soil honor Björk’s mother, environmental activist Hildur Rúna Hauksdóttir, who passed away in 2018. Released alongside Björk’s 2022 album Fossora, composed and arranged by Björk, the works are presented at the museum on a theatrical scale. 

Ancestress reckons with the cyclical nature of life. Set in a remote valley in Iceland, the lamentation is staged as a ritualistic procession of musicians and dancers, including Björk herself, who is accompanied by her son, Sindri Eldon in the chorus. The film was made in close collaboration with many of Björk’s longstanding creative partners, including the filmmaker Andrew Thomas Huang, and James Merry, co-creative director with Björk, and designer of the masks and ritual objects that adorn the musicians.

The polyphonic 9-part choral work Sorrowful Soil is a requiem expressing the loss of the mother as a life force. The oval-shaped video, directed by Viðar Logi and Björk as creative director, speaks to both human and geological time, filmed at the site of the erupting Fagradalsfjall volcano. Thirty speakers arrayed through the gallery each transmit a single voice from the Hamrahlíð choir, conducted by Þorgerður Ingólfsdóttir. As one walks through the gallery, the experience moves between singular and synergistic voices, invoking a sense of humanity that is at once individual and collective.