Björk’s Iceland Exhibition Puts Collaboration at the Center — and James Merry Steps Into View
At the National Gallery of Iceland, Björk’s latest exhibition, “Echolalia,” and James Merry’s retrospective, “Metamorphlings,” are unfolding side by side, turning a long-running artistic partnership into the subject itself. The pairing gives museum visitors a rare look at how the singer’s visual language has been built, piece by piece, through collaboration, research, and a shared appetite for experimentation.
“Echolalia” includes three recent works: “Sorrowful Soil” (2022), “Ancestress” (2022), and “Nerve Bloom” (2026). “Sorrowful Soil” was written after the death of Björk’s mother, while “Ancestress,” a tribute to her late mother, was directed in part by Andrew Thomas Huang. “Nerve Bloom” was created with Natalia Kleszczewska and Natalie Liu, extending the exhibition’s emphasis on collective authorship rather than solitary genius.
Merry’s retrospective adds another layer to that story. The U.K.-born, Reykjavik-based artist began working with Björk in 2009 as a research assistant, gathering references and ideas for her projects long before he made a mask. His first work for her, “Family” (2014), was a gift for her birthday and drew on the palette of *Vulnicura*. Björk liked it enough to ask for more, and over time Merry developed the elaborate face pieces now associated with her albums, videos, and performances.
Those works, gathered in “Metamorphlings,” are less about disguise than transformation. Merry’s embroidered forms, wire structures, latex surfaces, and pearl-like clusters often seem to grow outward from the face rather than sit on top of it. He has said he is fascinated by the face because it can be altered so easily, and that his masks are meant to feel permeable, as if they are emerging from the body itself.
The exhibition also underscores how improvised his process can be. Merry rarely sketches in advance, preferring to work directly with materials, sometimes finishing pieces in hotel rooms, cars, or backstage moments before they are worn. That urgency has become part of the work’s character: intimate, handmade, and closely tied to performance.
Seen together, the two exhibitions make a persuasive case for collaboration as an artistic medium in its own right. In Björk’s world, sound, image, costume, and ritual are not separate disciplines but interlocking parts of the same imaginative system — one that Merry has helped shape from the inside.
