We All Come From The Same Village, 2026, Video, 00:15:42

While researching the histories that connect Poland and Iceland, artists Lukas Bury and Weronika Balcerak came across a story that may or may not be true, of a child born in an Ursus tractor in rural Iceland and a teddy bear sent from the Ursus office in Poland as a gift for the newborn. The details are uncertain, but the story resonated with the artists’ own experiences – memories of family, childhood and the objects that travelled with them across borders. Like much of the exhibition, it reflects both personal history and collective movement, showing how lives, labour and care are carried forward across time and distance. Some Honest Persons is an exhibition about how we move through the world, whether we are moving locally – driving a car, working a tractor, travelling to a job – or crossing greater distances, leaving one country and settling in another. Long before Poles became the largest immigrant group in Iceland, goods were already circulating between the two countries. Coal, textiles, machinery and consumer goods – including the now-iconic Prince Polo chocolate bar – travelled across the North Atlantic, creating a shared material culture that preceded contemporary migration by decades. Through such circulation, the things that surround us begin to feel familiar again. Text by curators Aldís Arnardóttir and Hólmar Hólm

Lukas Bury (b. 1991) and Weronika Balcerak (b. 1996) form the Reykjavík-based artist duo Austur-Íslendingar. The name reworks Vestur-Íslendingar, a historical term used for Icelanders who emigrated to America, and reflects questions of arrival, displacement and belonging. Their practice includes installation, textiles, image-based research and site-responsive work. They develop their projects through sustained processes of making and contextual inquiry, bringing together personal experience with historical reference. Their work is characterised by a careful use of materials and a clear spatial language, as they focus on how meaning is formed through presence, repetition and shared space.