Roni Horn

Roni Horn (born September 25, 1955 ) is an American visual artist and writer.

The granddaughter of Eastern European immigrants, she was born in New York City, where she lives and works.

She is currently represented by Xavier Hufkens in Brussels and Hauser & Wirth.

She is openly gay.

Horn was born on September 25, 1955, in New York City.

She was named for her grandmothers, both of whom were named Rose.

She first traveled to Iceland in the 1970s.

Since her first encounter with the island as a young arts graduate visiting on a fellowship from Yale, Horn has returned to Iceland frequently.

She graduated with BFA in 1975 at age 19.

Describing her "fast jaunt" in Providence, she stated "I had a studio in a bad neighborhood with very little daylight. It was dangerous and depressing."

Horn received an MFA in sculpture from Yale University.

Since 1975 she has travelled often to Iceland, whose landscape and isolation have strongly influenced her practice.

Horn has been intimately involved with the singular geography, geology, climate and culture of Iceland.

The ongoing series of books entitled To Place (1990-) concern Iceland.

Reproducing 13 watercolour and graphite drawings, Bluff Life (1990) was produced in 1982 during a two-month stay in a lighthouse off the southern coast of Iceland in a town called Dyrhólaey.

The series totals thirteen drawings, all made on note cards.

Horn noticed the building in the 1990s.

It is located at the high point of the town, overlooking the harbour and the sea.

The second book, Folds (1991), is a collection of photographs documenting extant sheepfolds.

To Place: Verne's Journey (1995) is the fifth in the series.

She has created several public artworks, including You Are the Weather—Munich (1996–97), a permanent installation for the Deutscher Wetterdienst bureau in Munich.

You in You (1997), a rubber-tiled walkway in Basel's east train station, mimics an unusual basalt formation of Iceland.

A photographic essay, the seventh volume Arctic Circles (1998) records the endless horizon of the North Sea, the feathers of an eider nest, and the rotating beacon of a lighthouse.

Some Thames (2000), a permanent installation at the University of Akureyri in Iceland, consists of 80 photographs of water dispersed throughout the university's public spaces.

Other publications include Dictionary of Water, This is Me, This is You, Cabinet of, If on a Winter's Night, Her, Her, Her, & Her, Wonderwater (Alice Offshore), and Index Cixous, 2003 – 05.

Weather has played an important role in Horn's work.

In 2004-2006, the books were selected as some of the most important photobooks in history.

It was conceived by Horn in 2004 as a sculpture installation and a community center.

In 2004, Hauser & Wirth in London was the location of an installation by Horn entitled Agua Viva for the exhibition Rings of Lispector.

The installation consisted of interconnecting rubber tiles into which fragments of text from Hélène Cixous' English translation of Clarice Lispector's Agua Viva (The Stream of Life) were embedded into the floor in contrasting shades of tan-colored rubber.

Horn manipulated passages of the text to shape partial and overlapping rings and loops, playing with the order and coherence of Lispector's text.

Doubt Box (Book IX) (2006) is a collection of cards rather than a bound volume.

Printed on both sides, the cards show pictures of glacial water, taxidermied birds, and a face.

In 2007 she undertook Artangel’s first international commission, creating Vatnasafn / Library of Water, a long-term installation in the town of Stykkishólmur, Iceland.

The installation is made up of water collected from Icelandic glaciers.

The "Library of Water" is housed in a former library building in Stykkisholmur on the west coast of Iceland.

In a 2009 interview, Horn reflected on her gender neutral name as an advantage, stating "when I was young I decided that my sex, my gender, was nobody’s business."

She grew up in Rockland County, New York.

Horn graduated from high school early and enrolled in the Rhode Island School of Design at age 16.

A 2009 journal article stated that the nine To Place books "together constitute one of the most important groups of artists' books since Ed Ruscha's 1960s books and Bernd and Hilla Becher's publications on industrial architecture."