Vortex 1998-1999

Yugoslavia

Last December Radhildur Ingadottir set out on a journey to Yugoslavia with five hundred fleece sweaters in her baggage which she dealt out to people in the village of Sremski Karlovci in Vojvodina county, children and adults of both sexes.
The gift sweaters were a part of her third “garment-work” during the last two years.

It began in the summer of 1998 when the artist contacted the international Red Cross staff in Iceland and told them that she was working on an art project of which five hundred fleece sweaters were a part. The clothes were to be given to people who had suffered because of war or had been victims of natural catastrophes. The Red Cross was asked to help by financing the fleece material and distributing the clothes to those in need.

The whole process from the time the material was bought and cut, the clothes were designed, sewn, and the geometric drawings printed on the clothes until they were given to refugees of war in Yugoslavia, was documented on video.
The video serves as a frame containing all the elements of the work.

As to the Yugoslavia garment-work, Vortex 1998, the villagers who wear the sweaters know about its relation to the garment-work by an Icelandic artist, that this gift is apart of a larger process and that they are not participating in making art objects by wearing the garments. Still, by using them they are a part of the process of artistic work. In that way the artist´s idea can rouse a chain of thoughts in far away places on the is earth

The text is an translation of a review on Radhildur Ingadottir’s artworks in the cultural magazine Skirnir, spring 1999. It was written by the art historian

Audur Olafsdottir.