Umeå School of Architecture (UMA) warmly welcomes students, staff and public to a talk by the Islandic artist Rúrí.
This is the first of a series of lectures organized by Umeå School of Architecture within the framework of EURAU26: The European Research in Architecture and Urbanism Symposium. The lecture is organized in partnership with UmArts and Umeå Art Campus. Rúrí is invited as a keynote speaker for the kick-off meeting for the EURAU26 Symposium which will be hosted by UMA in June 2026 under the title LATITUDES: situated reflections on architectural research.
People may have different motivations to express themselves artistically; and for Rúrí, art is the language. It allows her to express herself in ways that would not have been viable through the written or spoken word. She touches on issues that matter to all of us; she raises questions concerning life and coexistence, of cosmic coherence; she challenges the relativity of objects and phenomena and queries the coordinate system that man has established to structure his surroundings. A list of all the forms of her artistic expression—such as performance, happening, drawing, sculpture, photography, video and so on—could lead us to expect a very heterogeneous oeuvre. But a closer look reveals an impressive consistency and almost unerringly logical development in her work, revolving around vital philosophical issues, terms she uses herself to describe her motivation: identity, time, cosmos, relativity, and environment. (Christian Schoen, “Preface”, in: Rúrí monograph, Hatje Cantz, Ostfieldern 2011, pp.6.)
The talk is funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ) initiation grant.
For more information about the EURAU 26 Symposium and the project LATITUDES, contact Maria Luna Nobile, Associate Professor at Umeå School of Architecture.