Illustrating an Airport in East Iceland – an interview with Rán Flygenring
Are public spaces just the means for some end? A restaurant is for nourishment, a theater is for entertainment, an airport is for transition. Recently the municipality in eastern Iceland (called Austurland) invited Rán Flygenring to liven up the walls of their local airport. Rán works independently on projects in the fields of illustration, art and design and has received numerous awards and nominations for her work. Her illustrations are playful and provocative, simple yet complex, diverse but consistent.
Rán sat down to talk about this recent project with Emanda Percival. During their conversation they discussed the potential art has to create culture in public spaces, the courage it takes to promote art instead of advertising, and how creativity can change our expectations of spaces in general.
An image taken from the ‘Visit Austurland’ website.
Egilsstaðir is east Iceland's main airport. It sits, a rectangular two-story box, on the shores of Lagarfjlót lake, surrounded by mountains more often snow streaked than not. It is a regional airport in every way; no security scanning, and a casual stroll across the tarmac to board the plane. Inside the building the distracting beauty of the landscape is replaced by the expected official white walls, posters and information boards by the mile, and chain seats that put you in direct, awkward eye-contact with your fellow waiting passengers.
Upstairs is a small café with windows overlooking the tarmac, the road to the highlands on one side, and the mountain pass that leads to the closest fjord on the other. It is a soulless space, without even the distraction of bright lights and duty-free shops charging more than the high street that you find in most international terminals.
Over the past week this soullessness has changed. As I walk up the stairs to the café I notice the once white and uninspiring walls are now filled with blue, yellow, and orange, and the more traditional airport narrative of rules and regulations has been infiltrated by illustrations showing visitors the many things which can be found in the region of east Iceland - Austurland. At the top of the stairs I find the artist, Rán Flygenring, finishing off the last wall. She stands on an old timber ladder, giant paintbrush in hand. To her right a stiff, white drop-sheet protects the floor from a collection of paint pots. Her white-blond hair is just long enough to brush the colour of the dark blue coverall she is wearing. On one of the chain seats behind her sits a young woman watching the illustrations appear in all their colour and joy.
As always when I meet Rán (pronounced Rown, like brown without the b), I’m struck by her joy for her work. Her illustrations cover the pages of multiple books, a postage stamp, environmental and equality awareness campaigns, corporate and government conferences, and any other way you can imagine (or have not yet imagined) visual language can be used. Her level of professionalism and experience however, has not drowned out her quirky, questioning nature, and her ability to express, through her drawings, what she cares about in a joyous way.
Rán packed away her gear and, after visiting a hot tub for a few glorious hours, we sat down over a long lunch to talk about her latest project at the Austurland regional airport.
E – Last year you illustrated the international Ferry Terminal in Seyðisfjörður, this year the airport, what’s the idea behind these?
R – The idea is to welcome people and give them a sense of place; to give them a sense of both arrival and atmosphere and to show that the space has something personal to say. So, the idea of having similar illustrations in two or more places is to make a unified voice of welcoming. I often think these places can be cold or not so friendly. Maybe not so unfriendly, but not friendly.
E – Not welcoming, they’re functional
R – So the idea is to make this public art in any space. And I feel in an airport it is especially important because either you are arriving home or you are arriving to see someone you care about; or there is some kind of shift as you are going to a new place to explore it. So the airport is a place of…
E – High emotional tension?
R – Maybe some kind of a change at least. Or arrival, it’s an arrival point. So to paint something that puts a little smile – it sounds cliché - but it puts a little smile on your face. What I also like is that the municipality has had the courage to use this kind of medium in an official space. And especially humour; I know that sometimes people are a little scared of humour because they are scared that people, or information gets lost, or that it gets somehow controversial
E – Yet it’s one of the most powerful ways to educate people
R – Yes exactly. I find it really great in this case that people see the value in this. But, there is nothing random, it is very planned and they [the municipality] know exactly what they want with it and they follow up. So the elements are all things from the East. I propose the content and make sure it includes the whole area,
E – Rather than just the popular bits?
R – Yeah. It has to include the whole area. Culture, activities and sports, nature, wildlife, and then there are the mountains, highlands, fjords, sea, and then there is food, music; all the different aspects of the culture. There are so many different kinds of pockets that have to be ticked. Something for the locals, something for kids and older people – it’s about trying to find something for everyone in there. I mean that’s the amazing thing about it, you can read this regardless of your language. Which is cool. I admire their choice of how to make their airport more inviting, so they can reach everyone with it.
E – I like that they didn’t just focus on international tourism
R – Yeah. It’s courageous really when you think about it, that they didn’t just give this space to advertisements
E – Did you know you were going to do the airport after doing the ferry terminal?
R – Mmm, well no. They had the idea but I just wanted to do that one and see how it panned out before doing this one
E – And the experience of both?
R – Different experiences. Different spaces, different places, different needs. Seyðisfjörður needed more information packed into the drawings. It was more a way finding
E – And stricter border wasn’t it? You couldn’t have people from town wandering in?
R – No. No, so it is only for the people arriving. What I find one of the most fun things about it [the airport and the ferry terminal] is that because I’m alone in the studio most of the time, which I enjoy, having the opportunity to come into a work place like this and get to know the people and the airport, or the harbour lingo and how they talk, and the coffee cups and the café store. It’s just so nice to be able to come into a situation like that and morph into its slippers and be a part of that kind of community for a week. And they’re all very welcoming. That’s really fun. You can see the different characters
E – So you get the fun of being able to dip your toe into a corporation without ever having any of the office politics
R – Yeah exactly. It’s like watching a little sitcom for a week. You’re totally on the outside but you get straight into the middle. Of course it’s really you just get the surface but you know, that is really fun
E – Have you had any feedback from the public?
R – In such a small place like this, it just spreads like wildfire, ‘I heard there is something happening in the airport.’ There are lots of people that have driven out specifically to have a look. They all really like it, love it. Really positive. I mean obviously the ones that don’t like it are not going to be saying much I guess. But you never know
E – Earlier you used the word courage to describe the people in the municipality office. I really liked your use of that word, the courage of these people to create and develop this project
R – I feel like it's important to recognise it because, especially here [the airport] in such a literary world, where if things are to be taken seriously they have to be written in numbers or on spreadsheets, I mean that’s the language of real stuff. And when you do something in an image it’s a decoration to support, no not even to support, to decorate the real things. In an airport I understand there are protocols applied, how things are said, but I still think there is so much possibility in sharing information, real information, important information in visual language. And I feel like people understand that more and more
E – And the more we become multicultural as well
R – Yes of course, and I mean everything on our phones, everything, it is all visual, why would we not include that when we actually want to interact with people? There is still this idea that if you want to be taken seriously, you use language and then you decorate it with fun things, like for kids.
E – Arriving somewhere via an airport can be quite nerve-racking and I wonder if there is an element of comfort people find through your illustrations. Not comfort within the subject of your illustrations, but comfort because they make people feel good. Just the simplicity of it, even without the information there is a joy in the work you create
R – Do you think it’s because you feel there is a sense that someone valued that and therefore there is someone who has put value on making something?
E – I don’t know. I wonder if part of it is that
R – Or is it just the drawing that makes you feel that?
E – Without thinking about it I would say it’s just the drawing, but when you say it was created because someone valued it’s creation, especially because it’s more permanent than a painting hung on the wall, which I think would have a very different effect
R – See this is impossible for me to see. I just have to trust that the people wanting it there are right in that this has a nice effect. A lot of the people that have come through have mentioned an exhibition that was held in the airport maybe 10 or 12 years ago and they say, ‘this reminds me of that, it was so fantastic when there was this painting exhibition’
E – It makes you think about how public spaces are misaligned in what we expect of them and what they can actually be. With an airport we have an expectation that it will be cold and clinical, and there will be bright lights and shops and food and a big cavernous space. Or it will be like here, which is very provincial and just a building where you pick up your bags and you go home; that’s it, you’re just stopping in. And yet, they are perfect gallery spaces with a captive audience. A lot of these people will be waiting for their bags longer than they will ever spend in an art gallery, maybe they don’t feel comfortable going into a gallery. Where as if it’s in a public space, like an airport they’re allowed to experience art and say, ‘I don’t get it’
R – ‘My kid could have made that’
E – Yeah, and it’s fine, they won’t be judged by it
R – That’s a really good point. The purpose of art in public space, the purpose and the quality of it and what it does; culture can be everywhere
Emanda (left) and Rán (right).
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At this point the amount of food we had eaten, including two desserts, started to slow our brains and our interview dwindled into random comments and a desire to go for a walk. As we stood to leave Rán glanced at the decoration on our table, a thin white, ceramic vase with three stalks of barley curving out of it, “I drew this on the wall, barley. I thought I was being funny, but apparently it’s a thing here.”
Rán’s work is a permanent fixture at Egilsstaðir airport in East Iceland. You don’t even need to have a flight to see it – you can just walk in and have a look. Her wayfinding drawings at the Seyðisfjörður Ferry terminal are also permanent, but you’ll need to catch a Ferry from Denmark to see that one.
To see more of Rán’s joyous drawings check out her instagram feed @ranflygenring and her website.
Thank you very much Emanda for this lovely interview, and thank you for your insight Rán!