Helgi Vignir Bragason
Other people’s memories
02.05.-26.07.2026

The house holds memories. The walls have absorbed emotions – love, wonder, empathy, pleasure and perhaps also a trace of anger, jealousy, and worry. I feel it as I run my fingers along the walls, sensing the fine wrinkles in the soft wood, dragging my feet across the subtle curves of the chipboard, breathing in the scent that has settled in the room. It is a smell of dust, sunlight, old paint, candle wax, and care. The sound of thick wool socks brushing the floor fills the room for a moment, then birdsong outside, a car rushing down the road.

In the photographic work Other People’s Memories, Helgi Vignir explores whether and how it is possible to approach and contemplate the lives and memories of others through the objects and material traces they leave behind. In the spring of 2025, he and his family moved to an old farmhouse on Møn. As Helgi Vignir began clearing up items the previous owners had left behind, he started to reflect on how objects carry traces of a life that has disappeared and the memories of those who once owned them. What meaning did these objects have for the family back then, what memories do they contain and what stories do they tell? Rather than discarding the items, that held little emotional or practical value for the new owners, he chose to approach them with curiosity and care. One by one, he brought them into his studio, arranged them, and photographed them with sensitivity and tenderness.

In Helgi Vignir’s photographs we see various tools, objects related to diverse hobbies, and other items that shed light on their previous owners and their lives. He photographs them individually against white or black backgrounds, using light deliberately to create mystery in some images, neutrality in others. Work gloves and gardening gloves of various kinds bear traces of the human hand. Our curiosity is awakened: who wore these gloves, and on what occasions? Why did the family keep an old copy of the novel Dune in the attic? Why was a small four-panel Rubik’s cube left behind when other belongings were packed away? Why do we keep some things and throw others away?

Excerpt from the exhibition text by Sigrún Alba Sigurðardóttir