Helena Margrèt Jònsdòttir

Helena Margrét Jónsdóttir (b. 1996) lives and works in Reykjavík. She studied at the Reykjavík School of Visual Arts and at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, and graduated with a BA from the Iceland University of the Arts in 2019. She builds her compositions first in Photoshop and then paints them in oil, and the passage between the two shows: objects sit on flat monochrome grounds with no shadow and no depth, lit like product images. What she paints is usually a replica rather than the thing itself, a plastic flower, a synthetic imitation, a dented can, a spider set inside a lollipop. The results are appetising and uncomfortable at the same time.

Her solo exhibition Just Like Real opened at the Reykjavík Art Museum in 2023, following You Can't Get Stuck in Your Own Web at Ásmundarsalur in 2022 and A Ghost of Another Ghost at Hverfisgallerí in 2021. Group exhibitions include What it Seems: Reality on Canvas at Reykjavík Art Museum Kjarvalsstaðir, Once Upon a Time in Mayfair at Phillips in London, and shows at Tang Contemporary Art in Beijing and Volery Gallery in Dubai. In 2025 she received the Motivational Award of the Icelandic Art Prize, and her work was featured in Vogue Scandinavia.

Jónsdóttir has worked with Plan X since 2020, when the gallery included her in the group exhibition Social Distancing in Milan, followed by her solo exhibition Liquida in 2021. The gallery has also presented her work at Untitled Art Miami Beach and at Contemporary Art Now Ibiza.