Selections from Fischersund: Faux Flora
Presented by National Nordic Museum
The National Nordic Museum organized the first-ever museum exhibition of the Reykjavik-based art collective and perfumery Fischersund. Fischersund was formed in 2017 by siblings Jónsi (vocalist of Sigur Rós), Inga, Lilja, and Sigurrós, the family-run collective draws inspiration from Iceland’s landscapes and the memories they create in them.
Titled Faux Flora, the exhibition of Fischersund’s work ran from November 2024 and February 2025 and was one of the Museum’s most popular to date. Faux Flora imagines new flowering plant species through artwork that synthesizes scent, sound, and images. With each flower, this multisensory exhibition elicits emotions and evokes experience. Motifs and fragrances familiar across Iceland coalesce into a new botany.
In Faux Flora, forms of life intertwine. The full exhibition progressed through five chapters—germination, growth, flowering, seed formation, and dispersal—mirroring the stages of human life: birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and death. A presentation of two works from the first and last chapters of Faux Flora will be reprised for the Seattle Art Fair.
Visitors will see and smell these fictive flowers. Fischersund names and describes each plant in the exhibition, drawing on botanical treatises from across a span of centuries. The artists use contemporary techniques such as video art to animate their flower species. Perfume—a primary artistic medium for the collective—provides important olfactory information for plant identification.
Visitors will listen closely to the sounds of each artificial plant and envision the proposed flower’s growth in the Icelandic landscape.