Roni Horn is a visual artist and writer who left high school at only 16, going on to study at the Rhode Island School of Design and later Yale University, where she received her MFA. She spent several years after graduation teaching at Colgate University before returning to New York to live and work.

Horn’s opus encompasses a vast array of mediums: sculpture, photography, site-specific installations, language-based paintings and drawing. She has described drawing as the key to her entire practice—despite the fact that her drawings are rarely exhibited—because she sees her work as being all about composing relationships between herself and her subject matter, as much as about the formal and conceptual elements. It is a true reflection of the exploration of mutability. Language, landscapes, gender, identity, natural phenomena and the relationships between them are all themes she studies. 

Most significant of all Horn’s influences has been her relationship with Iceland. She first travelled there after completing her BFA and continues to visit frequently. She has spent much of her career focused on capturing the vast and impressive geological landscapes and activity considerably removed from the effects of globalisation and consumer growth. Since 1990, she has worked consistently on her series ‘To Place’: a set of books that directly explore Iceland and her relationship with it. Iceland acts as muse, subject and medium. 

In To Place: Verne’s Journey (1997), photographs of Iceland’s land and seascapes transform the subject matter into a medium by focusing on the geological features: their shape, formation and dynamism. The photograph is merely capturing a moment in time, and nature is the creator. Similarly, with ‘You Are The Weather’ (1994–5), her 100 photographs of the same young woman’s face emphasise the importance of appreciating the change and variety that occurs over time. She stresses the idea that no single experience with a place—or person, or feeling—is identical to any other. Subtle shifts, changes and differences between people and landscapes, minute to minute, mean that each viewer has a unique interaction with it—a reflection of the mutability of all kinds of relationships. 

The idea of mutability relates also to Horn’s sense of identity, her androgyny, the manner in which her works are created and the effects of working on her art in isolation. It is reflected in the changes that occur in the geological features of Iceland, existing as they do in relative seclusion. This can be seen in Horn’s practice and the personal searches of her texts. 

Horn's 2006 sculpture White Dickinson (TO SHUT OUR EYES IS TRAVEL) (2006) borrows a quote from Emily Dickinson, with whom Horn feels an affinity. Her ‘Remembered Words’ series brings together words and watercolour dots, creating a very personal map of language, associations and meaning—some straightforward, some absurd—brought together to make something beautiful. These works exemplify Horn’s deep-seated interest in exploring and understanding one’s identity and how it is shaped, in isolation and with influences.