Sunday Thoughts: On Roni Horn

As a child, I have always been told that true intelligence can be shown when one can explain the most complex subjects in only a handful of
words. Roni Horn does it with a roomful of portraits.

Roni Horn is an American visual artist born in 1955 in New York, where she grew up in the city and its suburbs. She graduated from Yale University in 1978 with a Master of Fine Arts degree, and before that, she studied at the Rhode Island School of Design. She specialised in sculpture, yet the establishment of her artistic career in the mid-70’s proved that she could develop her art in various types of media. She has been exhibiting her work internationally, amongst them are drawings, photographic installations, performances, and sculptures. A reoccurring theme in her works is identity and its mutation. With her works she often underlines that identity is not something that is singular and fixed, but rather, something that can change over time, according to its environment. Her belief in multiplicity is evidently reflected in the diversity of her work and its nature. Aside from the reoccurring theme of identity and multiplicity, her work also has a strong connection with Iceland. The island’s unique nature as well as its geographical isolation has intrigued Horn ever since she travelled to the country after finishing graduate school. The constant changes that the country must undergo due to its…