A new exhibition at the National Gallery of Iceland, titled "Echolalia," showcases Björk's visual and collaborative artistry across three rooms, featuring video installations, a choral work, and an immersive audio-visual experience. Works include "Sorrowful Soil" (2022), a tribute to her mother with a 30-speaker choir installation, and "Ancestress" (2022), a video directed by Andrew Thomas Huang with masks by James Merry. A new piece, "Nerve Bloom" (2026), created with painter Natalia Kleszczewska and digital artist Natalie Liu, uses dual-sided LED screens and projection. Concurrently, the museum hosts "Metamorphlings," a retrospective of Merry's work, which originally prompted the exhibition before Björk offered her contribution.
The exhibition matters because it reframes Björk not merely as a musician but as a visionary creative director who builds immersive worlds through deep, sustained collaboration with visual artists, rather than treating them as hired help. By placing her work alongside Merry's retrospective, the show highlights how Björk's practice elevates collaborators into co-creators, challenging conventional boundaries between music and visual art. This approach offers a model for interdisciplinary artistry and underscores the National Gallery of Iceland's role in presenting innovative, sound-driven exhibitions.