Icelandic sculptor to guide visitors through outdoor exhibit

SHREVEPORT, La.—A sculptor from Iceland will be at a Louisiana college in the upcoming week to guide visitors through her outdoor sculpture series called Borders.

Eleven pairs of life-sized androgynous human figures were installed around Centenary College in Shreveport in early October. They’ll remain through the school year.

SculptorSteinunnThórarinsdóttir (STAY-nin THOHR-ihr-inz-DAHtihr) will be at Centenary on Friday, leading a free artist’s walk at 5 p.m. Members of Friends of the Meadows, a group which supports the college’s art museum, can attend a party afterward.

The figures are naked, earless and have their eyes closed. Each pair includes one figure of cast iron and one of cast aluminum.

“These figures form a border where the viewer can cross,” Thórarinsdóttir says in a video on her website, made when Borders debuted in 2011 outside the United Nations headquarters in New York.

Because the sculptures are lifesized and neutral, viewers can “interact, touch, and identify themselves with the sculptures,” she said in an artist’s statement included in a news release from Centenary.

Centenary, founded in 1825, is a private, four-year liberal arts institution affiliated with the United Methodist Church. The exhibit is the second in the Meadows Outdoors sculpture series sponsored by the school’s Meadows Museum of Art.