Ekki einu sinni // Not Once

Associate chair of the department of Art + Design Julia Hechtman will exhibit this series of short video portraits at the Reykjavik Museum of Photography, on view August 19 – October 22, 2023. 

Hechtman began to work on Not Once while a Fulbright Scholar in Iceland, in 2019, starting the project by recording personal stories of local Icelanders about specific locations and a sense of place. She then visited the locations and recorded video footage on site. When the audio and video are coupled together, a new sense of intimate narrative is created, transforming one experience into another, and ultimately creating a third: the viewer’s experience. 

Hechtman is a visual artist who makes works focusing on the balance of absence and presence, life and death, and real-time and memoried experience in her multi-faceted studio practice. The natural world features prominently in her works, which has allowed her to travel extensively, and to contemplate the familiar in new ways.