amilton de azevedo writes about I am from Reykjavik, by Sonia Hughes (United Kingdom), presented in the 2024 Festival TransAmériques (FTA – Tiohtià:ké/Montreal). this text is part of a special coverage; the critic traveled to Canada at the invitation of the FTA.

Sonia Hughes looks around La Fontaine Park (Montreal/Canada) to find the perfect spot. She then claims a land of her own through measuring and spraying the limits of her territory-to-be. One can perhaps sense a glimpse of colonialism there; every grain of dirt, every ground throughout the Earth carries within the entire history of what lived there before what there is. But I am from Reykjavik (2021, United Kingdom) seems to be nourishing on more ancestral perspectives regarding discovery, occupation and establishment.

Hughes measures a piece of land. Builds a house. Makes it home. Dismantles it. Leaves. This is an objective synthesis of I am from Reykjavik that might be quite accurate regarding the performative installation itself; at the same time, it leaves pretty much everything out. During the seven hours of the piece, life happens.

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Just after the artist sets up her working squares, she goes for her water bottle. Before drinking it herself, she waters the flowers already in her soon-to-be garden. Within the first few hours of I am from Reykjavik, Hughes won’t accept any help. Throughout the entire performance, she does not quite ask for it. There relies what can be seen as one of the most interesting things within the piece: it is not your conventional interactive performance.

In many cultures, house-building is a community builder, maintainer, celebrator. I am from Reykjavik produces its spontaneous and ephemeral community within it; it is a gathering, an encounter. Not only regarding Hughes’ occasional (and frequent) conversations with people helping her through her work (or just curious), but also considering what happens when a person is in a public space doing something supposed to be seen. La Fontaine Park was crowded on a beautiful Saturday, and people would just hang around for a while. At the same time, unknown bystanders might engage in conversations of their own, which might probably never happen if there was not something being built in front of them.

To witness or to participate? Many people would insist on offering help when Hughes did not need it. To see her, a black woman, struggling with a structure, is at the same time symbolic and moving – everyone can see the sweat and the efforts, everyone’s impulse is to somehow make things easier. But I am from Reykjavik performative programme seems to have at its core the idea that is just Sonia Hughes acknowledging everything going one at the same time that she is just there to do her thing. Her job. She takes her time within every action. And also gets herself some resting moments.

This is important. To rest. To work and to rest. Early in the performance, just after setting up the floor of the yet-to-be-a-house, Hughes just stood up there. Standing her ground. Contemplating her own hands, the hands that are building it. There is just something about how Hughes performs; her subtle-shifting states of presence transiting from an openness to the world towards the objective building demands. At some point, she was looking around her soon-to-be neighborhood; there was a lot going on. Later, when we talked for a bit, Hughes, laid down on her built-by-herself ground, talked about the roof – the beautiful blue sky, sunlight coming through the leaves.

To sit and witness the becoming of something. One screw at a time, one talk at a time, step by step onto creating a meeting place which already hosts encounters as it is being built. Contemplation plays a huge part toward the intention of I am from Reykjavik. Whilst we were inside the house-turned-home, Hughes spoke about how her work is sometimes questioned whether it is art or not. I can’t see how this can be even considered. One that is open to what is happening is just drown into the act of building on itself.

When she leaves to get more material, some sorts of “pauses” are established. These are the moments that the curious-but-shy people come closer to the structure to look upon its means to be. When Hughes is there, people would just come up and ask what she is doing. And these are the moments where I am from Reykjavik establishes itself as an invitation to talk about life, living, community, belonging. 

At some point, she is talking with a group of theater students that mentions that they will be graduating within a few months. “Then you’re gonna be poor”, she says, and everyone who gets it laughs. The intimacy within the conversations being held are also something to look at: what is lost between the lines and what is found between the lines as the dialogues are being constantly perpassed by everything in the surroundings and so much of it is just for those within the grounds of the house to be shared and heard.

The materiality of the performative installation, by architect Lee Ivett, carries within its structure a meaningful image: it opens wide towards the door; as if it were a perspective drawing, with a focal center spreading from a distance, I am from Reykjavik openhearted attitude is established within its architecture. At the front door, a little table with a great picture of Hughes’ parents. They, who came before, are the ones receptioning whoever attempts to come closer – and not everyone should be invited, as Hughes is tired and just feels like having her cup of tea and listening to the “old” music that her parents would also listen to. One does not invite everybody into their houses.

Seven hours performing. Roughly, six hours of building a house. Half an hour turning it home. Another half hour to dismantle it. What it means to build a house, what it takes to make it home? Is it a cup of tea? Is it the familiar tunes? Is it the ones that you bring close by? Sonia Hughes’ I am from Reykjavik powerful simplicity is, at the same time, a political statement, an invitation and the possibility to just be there and see all the beauty that lies within witnessing the creation of something from scratch. For a few hours on that Saturday afternoon, that place where there was only grass – and now is only grass – was a home.