Björk museum retrospective tests boundaries of art

A new exhibit that has opened at the Museum of Modern Art focuses on the career of Icelandic singer Bjork.

The retrospective at MoMA draws from more than 20 years of the Icelandid singer Björk’s career. Timothy A Clary / AFP photo

In one of its most complex and ambitious exhibitions, the Museum of Modern Art has designed a career retrospective on Björk that poses the question – just how does one put music on a wall?

The New York institution hopes that its approach not only does justice to the wildly experimental Icelandic singer, but also provides a model for other museums through its fluid synthesis of various media forms and its priority on making the audience feel connected.

The highlight of the two-floor retrospective, which opened to the public on Sunday and runs until June 7, is a walk through the artist’s eight adult solo albums, with each museum-goer given a headset that, triggered by sensors, narrates a fictitious biography of Björk set to highlights of the music.

As the distinctive voice of Antony – the lead singer of Antony and the Johnsons – entreats the visitor to slow down and reflect, the story written by the Icelandic poet Sjón tells of a girl who was born in black sands and goes on to defend the weak.

The visitor sees diaries of Björk with her musings – "I don't recognise myself / This is very interesting," she writes in one, which turned into the song Headphones – as well as some of Björk's most sensational outfits, including the swan dress she wore to the 2001 Oscars and the dress of tiny bells designed by Alexander ­McQueen.

The lobbies feature music from four "instruments" including a Tesla coil that appeared on Björk's 2011 album Biophilia, an innovative work that was accompanied by a smartphone app – the first to enter the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

“Björk was asking us to do things that pushed the boundaries of what technology could do, what sound could do, but even more importantly, what we as participants in an exhibition could do,” says Glenn Lowry, the director of MoMA.

“It seemed that the rule of the game was to break the rules,” he says, calling the retrospective “complicated, exhilarating and one of the most interesting projects we’ve ever had the chance to work on”.

If few would dispute that Björk is innovative, the retrospective can be sure to unsettle supporters of “classic” modern art by giving a 49-year-old musician so much coveted space at one of the world’s most influential ­museums.

In one concern acknowledged by Lowry, the retrospective has space constraints. Visitors will have to reserve time spots and wait patiently, raising fears of overcrowding or massive queues.

The retrospective is also not shy about Björk’s likeness, with pictures or statues of her at every turn. Yet the flesh-and-blood Björk, who has worked with MoMA for years on the project, appeared only briefly last Tuesday, in a dark room in a confining dress that resembled three giant black sea cucumbers with a net over her.

Björk thanked MoMA before debuting her video for the song Black Lake, which will play in a special studio with facing screens as part of the retrospective. The song appears on Vulnicura, her emotionally wrenching new album about her breakup with longtime partner Matthew Barney – a prominent modern artist who has numerous works in MoMA's collection, if not his own retrospective.

The video for Black Lake was filmed over three days in a cave in Iceland and Björk appears in a copper-wire dress as she bangs her head toward the ground and pounds her chest. "Did I love you too much?" she sings to mournful strings interspersed with electronic beats, as the 10-minute video culminates in the eruption of purple lava.

Not turning herself completely into a museum piece, Björk is also planning several intimate shows around New York starting on Saturday at Carnegie Hall.

Klaus Biesenbach, the curator-at-large for the MoMA, says that Björk insisted to him: “‘Foremost I am a musician, I am a singer and I am a composer. Can you, and can MoMA, make an exhibition where music is an authentic experience, like a painting is an authentic ­experience?’”

Biesenbach voices hopes that the retrospective would inspire future projects that go beyond being documentaries or ­catalogues.

“I hope that this exhibition transforms itself into an instrument itself,” he says.