Tomorrow, Saturday at 3 p.m., the exhibition 'A Window to the World – Away from Home and Back Again' will be opened. The exhibition is the result of a summer project that Nicola von Kuilenburg has been working on this summer for Þekkingarnetið. The project is one of those to receive a grant from the North East Development Fund for 2024. The exhibition will take place at the Cultural House in Húsavík.
This summer, Nicola has interviewed six residents from the North East Iceland Knowledge Network's area of operation who share the common bond of being of foreign origin. From the interviews, she has created stories about her interviewees, covering their childhood in their home country, customs and traditions they have even brought with them to where they have settled, and events in their home country, some of which are of global significance, that have had an impact on them in both the short and long term. The stories have been translated with the help of the interviewees into Icelandic, English and each of their native languages, using artificial intelligence for the translations. The stories were then read and recorded in three languages each. Nicola also took photographs of her interviewees, and the stories will be displayed with the photographs at the exhibition. Visitors will also be able to scan a QR code to listen to the stories read in the three languages associated with each of Nicola's interviewees.
The purpose of the project and the exhibition is to offer a glimpse into a world that is unfamiliar to many of us, as many of us have neither travelled to nor lived in the places where Nicola's interviewees live, and are therefore unfamiliar with their daily lives. It therefore provides us with new knowledge that can contribute to a greater understanding and tolerance of one another.
It has been extremely interesting to follow Nicola's work on the project this summer, and it is safe to say that the result has exceeded our expectations. Her interviewees were prepared to tell much more personal stories about their lives than we had hoped for, and Nicola has taken great care to present both the stories and the exhibition in a way that treats the interviewees and the stories they tell with sensitivity and respect.
We are very much looking forward to sharing the results with visitors to the exhibition, both at the opening tomorrow and during the days the exhibition will be running. The exhibition will be in the library foyer and will run from 24 August to 14 September, open during the library's opening hours.