This artwork resembles my great-grandmother’s box of chocolates. She used it to store photographs instead of chocolate; pictures of her and my great-grandfather when they were young, wedding photos, pictures of their children (including those who lived and those who passed away at a young age). There she also stored newspaper clips, articles on religious affairs, obituaries and news of shipwrecks. I assembled these memories from my grandmother’s life on her living-room floor. If I promised to clean up the mess I made, I could even borrow her box of buttons, which I used to frame these black & white photographs and the newspaper articles. When I many years later started to put together my own fragmented collection of the memoirs of a nation, I placed it in the travel-trunk of my grandfather and embarked on a journey. In each place that I have been to, I have met wonderful people, been invited for coffee, listened to stories and obtained new pictures for the travel-trunk.
Guðbjörg Lind Jónsdóttir