María Dalberg’s film Uncontainable Truth (2021) investigates the fate of Icelandic working women in the 16th-19th century. These women performed hard labour. They walked kilometers over frozen landscapes to beat and scrub their master’s clothes, cared for grazing animals in all weather conditions, and performed other strenuous physical tasks. They belong to subaltern classes of illiterate and landless people tied to the land.
Dulsmál are criminal cases in which a woman hides her pregnancy and the birth of her child. The child either dies of exposure to the elements or negligence. Two Icelandic laws were formalized in 16th-17th century. These laws say that every woman that kills her child should get the death penalty, even if she claims to have borne a lifeless child.
Dalberg works with embodied history to channel the words of women that have been lost. Dalberg’s film is taken from 5 testimonies of 16th-19th century women and aims to give them back the voices that they were consistently denied, the film brings their names to light through spoken stories recorded in old manuscripts and other contemporary sources.
Àngels Miralda Àngels Díaz Miralda Tena
Erin Honeycutt wrote an article on this work, published in Berlin Art Link.
https://www.berlinartlink.com/2021/07/06/maria-dalberg-kuenstlerhaus-bethanien-solo-exhibition-review/
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The main sources I used while working on Uncontainable truth are:
Már Jónsson, Dulsmál 1600-1900, Már Jónsson bjó til prentunnar,
Sagnfræðistofnun Háskóla Íslands, Háskólaútgáfan, 2000.
Alþingisbækur Íslands 1570-1800 IX, Reykjavík.
Alþingisbækur Íslands 1570-1800 XI, Reykjavík.
Alþingisbækur Íslands 1570-1800 VIII, Reykjavík.
ÞÍ (Þjóðskjalasafn Íslands)Sýsl. Eyjafj. IVb-22, bl. 17r-39r; Ka. 177: 13. og 21. janúar 1847.