Running through September 2026 at Listasafn Íslands, Björk’s Echolalia reframes the artist entirely. Rather than presenting a musician crossing over into the visual arts, the exhibition highlights a fully multidisciplinary practice that inherently dissolve the borders between sound and sight. The exhibition unfolds as an immersive environment where sound, image, performance and installation are treated as a single continuous field.

‘When you listen to a song for the first time, it is like swallowing a whale, you need to feel the whole musical sculpture in one go’ she said.

At the centre of the exhibition are three major works presented on a theatrical scale, each expanding Björk’s long-standing interest in the relationship between voice, nature and technology. Two of them, Ancestress and Sorrowful Soil, are deeply personal elegies created in memory of her mother. The third introduces new material drawn from her forthcoming album, positioning the exhibition as both retrospective reflection and forward-looking experiment.

Ancestress is presented as a ritual-like procession set in a remote Icelandic landscape, where musicians and dancers move through a cycle of mourning and renewal. Rather than telling a linear story, the work treats performance as a ceremonial presence, exploring life as a continuous process of change.

In contrast, Sorrowful Soil takes the form of a large-scale choral composition, unfolding across nine sections. Built around a polyphonic structure, it disperses voices through a spatial sound system in which each speaker carries an individual strand of the composition. The effect is both architectural and immersive: a requiem in which sound is not projected from a single source but distributed across the gallery space, surrounding the listener in overlapping layers of harmony and fragmentation.

Together, these works reflect Björk’s enduring fascination with systems, ecological, emotional and technological, and her ability to translate them into sonic and spatial form.

The exhibition extends this approach into a fully immersive setting, where visitors move through environments shaped as much by acoustics and atmosphere as by visual form.

Presented alongside the exhibition is Metamorphlings, a project by long-time collaborator James Merry, whose intricate masks and sculptural works explore transformation, identity and myth. His presence reinforces the exhibition’s broader interest in hybridity and metamorphosis, echoing Björk’s own practice of constant reinvention.

Echolalia operates as a living framework for Björk’s evolving work. It positions music as something spatial, embodied and experiential. In doing so, it reflects the broader trajectory of her career: an ongoing refusal to separate sound from image, or performance from environment, and a commitment to art as an ever-shifting ecosystem of forms.

On 12 August 2026, Echolalia: the rave will take place. Björk will host and DJ this one-day event, timed to coincide with a solar eclipse at Víðistaðatún in Hafnarfjörður. Featuring performances by Arca, Sideproject and Ronja, the event also marks the 40th anniversary of Smekkleysa (Bad Taste), the Icelandic collective and label that first helped shape and launch Björk’s expansive, genre-defying creativity.

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