Bára Bjarnadóttir
BA Fine Art 2017
www.barabjarnadottir.com

The idea for ‘Þú átt súkkulaðið en þú átt samt ekki súkkulaðið’ came about when NASA gave a public announcement that the galaxy Trappist-1 could possibly sustain life. Therefore, Mars was no longer the only other planet with conditions for life. Two weeks prior, I had squashed a Mars bar on a Rose Quartz stone, in an attempt to compare the two objects.

The comparison occurs within the juxtaposition of the Mars bar’s physical presence and the relative absence of planet Mars. The two interact two dimensionally, behind the screen of a monitor, gazed at by humans.

The viewers are invited to listen to the Rose Quartz’s history, and eavesdrop on my conversation with someone who is quite knowledgable about planet Mars.

I examine the role of humans in the discovery of planet Mars, as opposed to the role of other forces. In parallel, I explore marketing strategies used by Mars chocolate in their advertising campaigns, and how outer space is presented to the public within popular culture. In 2000, Mars chocolate made an advert that said that in a 100 years we could very well be eating Earth bars on Mars. What does that mean?

I want to address how humans misunderstand the world. I don’t claim to have any answers myself, however, it is clear that we humans tend to misinterpret things and mostly consider what we see within our limited horizon. But even if we throw a half-eaten mars bar in the bin, it still exists—just out of our line of vision