Anna Jóelsdóttir

Gallery Affiliations: Stefan Stux Gallery. Zg Gallery

Region: Midwest

I grew up in Iceland without the influence of mass media. I was twenty years old when I saw television for the first time. I read books, any book I could lay my hands on. There was one radio station. It had everything: novels, the world news, plays, poetry, Sunday sermons, music, concerts, all taken in by ear. Reading books and listening to the radio got me into the habit of making up my own visuals. Every voice, every story, every place or sound I heard or read about created an image in my head. Did that give me as distorted a view of the world as today’s media? It was distorted, for sure. I remember, for example, when I saw in the theatre, an actor I had only heard on the radio with this beautiful romantic voice upon whom I had attached my own image, and who I had fallen in love with. It was a shock. He was NOT my Romeo. Just his voice was.