“I’ve been sober for 13 years but I consider my work to be trippy as hell”: Inside icelandic artist’s Shoplifter’s hair-raising world

The red thread for Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir has always been hair. “A neon red thread, really,” she says. Better known as Shoplifter, or Shopi for short – “Hrafnhildur is just a tongue twister from hell” – the Icelandic artist has garnered major accolades over her decades-long career, exhibiting her explosive installations from MoMA in New York to the Venice Biennale.

Her latest work, Crazy, brings Shoplifter to Rome. “The space is like a cloister, this pathway,” she says. “You can own a space without overtaking it and have the existing building evaporate.” As its name suggests, the piece is a no-holds-barred, “beyond psychedelic” installation, a “radioactive rainbow path” devoid of black or brown. “I know it doesn’t sound very healthy, but I wanted it to be a shock to your nervous system,” she says. “I’ve been sober for 13 years, but I consider my work to be trippy as hell. It’s a bit manic and super in its nature. Synthetic nature, really.”

Growing up in Reykjavik, Shoplifter’s kaleidoscopic worldview was far from usual. “I blame it all on boredom,” she says, noting that growing up in the 1970s, she was often left to find her own means of entertainment. “I would do arts and crafts with whatever I could find in my grandparents’ garages. Colourful threads and textiles.”

In the 1980s, she got a haircut “no one understood” inspired by none other than Boy George. Colourful hair extensions were crucial for the look. “I wanted to stand out. I think that’s been the red thread, the core to my identity,” she says. “My smudgy eyeliner and clothes were a no-no if you wanted to be taken seriously in the art world. It was an insecurity of mine, but I made it a habit to challenge my preconceptions. Most of the time, I’d end up saying ‘f**k that’ and do it my way.”

As is often the case, the influence or importance of certain preferences or experiences – that Boy George hair, for instance– seemed innocuous at the time. From Shoplifter’s current vantage point, these moments fit neatly into a vibrant narrative. “I can see all these stepping stones or influences throughout my life, but I didn’t realise their significance until later because it was just so normal to me,” she says. “I’m 52, and at my age, you start to take stock of your life. When I look back, I’m intrigued by how consistent I have been in my choices. You go with your instincts and somehow end up exactly where you should be.”

When it came time for college, Shoplifter initially studied for a business degree. However, her mother was quick to realise that the “sensible” path was not for her daughter, urging her to attend art school instead. “She wanted me to be happy, and being creative makes me happy,” the artist explains. “Pursuing what you love isn’t easy. It is difficult, a challenge, but it isn’t unbearable because you love it. For me, being creative was an antidote to depression and a way to get through those relentless dark winters in Iceland.”

Upon graduation, Shoplifter knew she didn’t want to stay in Europe. “Whenever I envisioned myself in Berlin or Paris, or somewhere like that, it was always in black and white,” she says, pointing to the long history and traditionalism in the European art scene. “In New York, I saw myself in full colour.” Just like Dorothy stepping into Oz, Shoplifter went from a world of monochrome to one rendered in full technicolour. “Toto, I’m not in Europe anymore,” she laughs. She followed her yellow brick road – or neon red thread, if you will – to hone her practice in the Big Apple.

New York also offered an unrestricted, anything goes curriculum. Never satisfied with the two-dimensionality of paintings, Shoplifter found the explorative nature of her new environment intoxicating. “I came to New York with little else but my pencil case,” she says. “It was a leap of faith. I wanted a place that felt young, with elbow room and headspace.”

Given the boundaryless nature of her new home, Shoplifter would have to set her own constraints in order to avoid complacency in her work. “I wanted to limit myself. So I took these felt markers that you can’t erase and created 340 portraits of my family members,” she says. “I wasn’t allowed to draw someone more than once. I had to live with my mistakes.” Restrictions, whether self-imposed or accidental, are a recurring theme throughout her career. Today, they come largely by way of the physical spaces to which she adapts her installations.

Another common thread to her work has been, well, thread. And though there were small happenings that, in hindsight, contributed to Shoplifter’s outrageous aesthetic, there’s no missing the breakthrough moment. “I was roaming around the city. I barely stayed in my studio,” she says. “I have had this affection for curiosities and peculiarity shops since I was 18 and worked in an antique shop in Reykjavik. And one day, I picked up a package of hair extensions from a dollar shop, and I just thought it was fabulous.” She started off braiding the hair, applying it to her drawings to create unexpected dimensions. “I’d draw hair using hair,” she says. “I wanted it to be physical and tangible. Textured. I’m a very tactile person.”

As it turns out, hair has been instrumental to the artist throughout her life. For instance, Shoplifter recalls exploring her grandparents’ house and coming upon an unexpected treasure. “I went into their bedroom and opened this drawer where my grandmother kept some of her things. And there I saw this long braid,” she says. At the time, the discovery of the carefully kept hair gave the artist chills. “It was like a remnant of her youth. A relic to her beauty in a way, and it was the first time I realised that grandma hadn’t always been a grandma. That she had been my age at one point.” In her early teens, Shoplifter decided she wanted a braid of her own. And so, the artist unceremoniously chopped her hair off. “It was horrible,” she says. “I hadn’t anticipated how decapitated I’d feel. It was like I had cut off my identity.”

To this day, Shoplifter has kept her braid carefully wrapped in foil, placed in an old box or iginally meant to house a wristwatch. “It’s almost like a coffin,” she says. “Of course, looking back, it is obvious it was m fascination for hair that led me to pick up the extensions in that dollar store. Even if it was unconscious, that’s just the way I am. If something sparks an emotion in me, I have to buy it.” Her studio, which she likens to a candy shop or a playground, is home to a “library of curiosities.”

Shoplifter’s own hair has been a canvas for experimentation. “I have had all kinds of cuts and perms. I actually started going grey when I was around 20,” she says. “And then when I had my kids, around 15 years ago, I put it up in a bun, and that’s how it has stayed.”

Just recently, on the recommendation of someone who you simply don’t disagree with, the artist started colouring her coif. “It was Björk who encouraged me to do it; she gave me these temporary hair crayons for Christmas,” she says. Björk and Shoplifter have known each other since childhood, working together in the aforementioned antique shop. When it came time to do the album cover for Medulla, Björk called upon her old friend to fashion her an intricately braided wig. Two braids circle the eyes, like a mask.

Shoplifter’s first major installation was in collaboration with Brazilian art collective A.V.A.F. for MoMA. “They did these huge, chaotic installations of colour and music,” she says. In 2008, they worked together on a large window installation at the famous New York institution. “It was actually the first time I used strong colours. With all of the neon and the lights, I created this braided multicolour 3D painting,” she says. “It was only supposed to be there for six months, but it stayed for a year and a half.”

Working with colour in this way – fearlessly, with a not-so-subtle dash of humour – was yet another breakthrough, the moment at which Shoplifter truly found her voice. She describes the experience as leaving her “totally liberated.” “It was like a threshold I had to step over,” she says.

For Shoplifter, it has always been about finding a way to be comfortable in the uncomfortable. And in setting ambitious goals and conquering them with panache. “It was always on my bucket list to represent Iceland at the Venice Biennale,” she says, a dream that came to fruition in 2019. The alien landscape, dubbed Chromo Sapiens, which enveloped the Icelandic Pavilion, has become synonymous with her singular style. “The installation I did there was like being inside of your own brain, looking at hair follicles all around,” she says. “That ’s kind of a disgusting way to put it, but that’s what it is like.”

Today, Shoplifter’s assistants help her make the bundles of brightly coloured hair used in her installations. Though the hair is synthetic and imported from China, she notes that “very little of it goes to waste.” “I recycle and reuse all of it, every last strand,” Shoplifter says. “The bundles come in single coloured, so we cut them up and blend them together to create the shades we need. It’s very painterly. In a way, it is a 3D landscape painting. It is a very organic process.”

It is a magical thing to meet someone so intertwined in her work, where there is no separation between the artist and the art, both aesthetically and spiritually. “I’ve been told on multiple occasions that I am my work. I’m flamboyant. I can be vain. I’m colourful and peculiar,” she says. “I want to bring some optimism into the world, and I do it through my work.” To Shoplifter, it comes naturally. “Somebody once told me, ‘It's the eighth deadly sin not to use your talent.’ And if I have a passion for doing something, then denying myself that because it doesn’t fall into the strict definition of fine art, then I’m an idiot.” And with that she sets off to continue following the thread.