Katrin Sigurdardottir’s entry for the Iceland pavilion, Foundation for the Lavanderia (2013) for the Venice Biennale is a beautiful piece of handmade tiled flooring that flows in and out of the laundry building; great, but what does it have to do with anything? While in any other context one might mistaken it as a mock-up display for a tiling company, I thought there might be something deeper going on here.
Based on the outline of an 18th century pavilion, with the outline of the walls and columns built up to skirting level, the Foundation firstly depicts the dichotomy between the utilitarian Lavanderia and the ‘opulent’ pavilion, and emphasizes it by floating it above the floor plane, and truncating the door so that visitors have to stop and crouch to go through the door and enter or exit the space.
