Island Zombie

An evocative chronicle of the power of solitude in the natural world

I'm often asked, but have no idea why I chose Iceland, why I first started going, why I still go. In truth I believe Iceland chose me.--from the introduction

Contemporary artist Roni Horn first visited Iceland in 1975 at the age of nineteen, and since then, the island's treeless expanse has had an enduring hold on Horn's creative work. Through a series of remarkable and poetic reflections, vignettes, episodes, and illustrated essays, Island Zombie distills the artist's lifelong experience of Iceland's natural environment. Together, these pieces offer an unforgettable exploration of the indefinable and inescapable force of remote, elemental places, and provide a sustained look at how an island and its atmosphere can take possession of the innermost self.

Island Zombie is a meditation on being present. It vividly conveys Horn's experiences, from the deeply profound to the joyful and absurd. Through powerful evocations of the changing weather and other natural phenomena--the violence of the wind, the often aggressive birds, the imposing influence of glaciers, and the ubiquitous presence of water in all its variety--we come to understand the author's abiding need for Iceland, a place uniquely essential to Horn's creative and spiritual life. The dramatic surroundings provoke examinations of self-sufficiency and isolation, and these ruminations summon a range of cultural companions, including El Greco, Emily Dickinson, Judy Garland, Wallace Stevens, Edgar Allan Poe, William Morris, and Rachel Carson. While brilliantly portraying nature's sublime energy, Horn also confronts issues of consumption, destruction, and loss, as the industrial and man-made encroach on Icelandic wilderness.

Filled with musings on a secluded region that perpetually encourages a sense of discovery, Island Zombie illuminates a wild and beautiful Iceland that remains essential and new.

"Roni Horn (b. 1955) is a prominent contemporary artist known for her sculptures, photography, and installations inspired by landscape and the natural world, and especially the isolated landscapes of Iceland, where she has travelled and lived for substantial periods of time since the early 1970s. Horn's work explores geology and climate; the interplay of nature, art, and place; and the relationships between words, appearance, androgyny, and the self. Horn is author of more than twenty books and artist's books, and is herself the subject of more than thirty books and exhibition catalogs, including a survey published by Phaidon and many by Steidl. Examples of her work include You Are the Weather (1994-96), a series of photographs of a young woman bathing in Icelandic hot springs; Pair Objects (1988), identical metal sculptures placed in two different locations; and the installation Library of Water (2007) in Iceland, with columns that enclose water from melting glaciers. Horn is arguably the most important visual chronicler of the landscape of Iceland. Upon graduating from her MFA program at Yale, she traveled to Iceland, journeying across its interior on a motorcycle. Over thirty years, she has continually returned to Iceland to explore and record the astonishing beauty of its geology, climate, and culture. This book will contain a range of texts, from evocative vignettes to illustrated essays written for Iceland's most widely-read newspaper. A combination of artists' writings and travelogue, the texts reveal Iceland as one of Horne's most important influences and inspirations, and record a unique and beautiful environment undergoing climate change"--
Island Zombie is a distillation of vignettes and essays on the natural and built environment (swimming pools are as much of a presence here as waterfalls), illustrated with the artist's photographs. Often occupying no more than half a page, these fragmentary glimpses and reflections are indeed like "soil samples", archived in an elegantly uncluttered volume that evokes Iceland's forlorn emptiness as much as its places and people.---Nancy Campbell, Times Literary Supplement
Brilliant. . . . Prosaic and profound, [Island Zombie] felt like standing before art again.---Bridget Quinn, Hyperallergic
'Iceland was the only place I went without cause, just to be there, ' the New York-based artist Roni Horn writes in Island Zombie, her attempt to explain her powerful affinity for the country. Pieced together from decades of essays, interviews, poetry and photographs, Horn's latest book is a reflection on the complex beauty of a place that she continues to return to with migratory insistence and regularity.---Chris Allnutt, Financial Times
A wonderful, beguiling read in which Roni takes us deep into her experience of Iceland.---Ben Luke, The Art Newspaper, A Brush With . . .
Sensually arresting . . . eloquent. . . . The first sections of the book will stoke the desire for a more in-depth study of Iceland; the others will interest veteran Iceland-watchers.-- "Kirkus Reviews"