LAUREL SIGFÚSDÓTTIR JÓHANNESSON

Laurel Sigfúsdóttir Jóhannesson studied Printmaking and Computational Media Design at the University of Calgary and the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, and the Royal College of Art in London, UK. An invited artist at over fifteen international residencies, she has twice been a visiting artist and scholar at the American Academy in Rome, has had the rare opportunity to research at the Vatican Library, and was an invited artist in residence at Palazzo Monti in Brescia, Italy.

Laurel’s lens-based practice explores the porous relationship between body and nature, examining how human presence is entangled with geological time, landscape, and elemental forces. Her work considers the body as both material and metaphor — a site of vulnerability and transformation within shifting environments. She creates works that unfold slowly, attending to gesture, atmosphere, and the subtle tensions between stillness and motion. 

Her print, photographic, interactive, and moving image artworks and her experimental films have been exhibited internationally in over seventeen solo exhibitions and over one hundred and fifty group exhibitions. Her work is in numerous collections, including the Government of Canada’s Global Affairs Diplomatic Art Collection, Glenbow Museum, Royal College of Art, Palazzo Monti, Suncor Energy, Encana Corporation, Cenovus Energy, and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, as well as private collections in Canada, the United States, Italy, Greece, Iceland, and the United Kingdom. Laurel’s work has been featured in publications such as L’Œil de la Photographie / The Eye of Photography, Designboom, CLOT magazine, Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art, The Art Talk Magazine, Elle Canada, and more.

Laurel is a Professor at the Alberta University of the Arts. Her research in the area of temporality, the moving image, interactivity, and generative art has been presented and published at conferences in Rome, Florence, Milan, Ravenna, the University of Greenwich, London, UK and the University of California – Los Angeles.