Those entering the Museum of Modern Art in New York these days will find themselves in a picture and sound installation in which Björk can be heard and seen from headphones and on canvases, on monitors and in picture frames. 50 in November, more than half of this time she shaped the pop world with a fascinatingly headstrong style, in which futuristic and archaic elements merged with each other in a natural way: organic-looking electronica, burst beats, mercurial melodies and a voice that became the flagship of pop "made in Iceland".
The 2011 album "Biophilia" alone offers its own multimedia microcosm in the MoMa. Björk dealt with the universe in both small and large dimensions, she had developed new instruments and had an app programmed for each song: an album as an open laboratory. From here it could hardly become more futuristic and abstract. Would their next experiment ever take place within the album format?
It should come differently, and instead of brooding over new concept music, Björk got in the way of her private life. Their relationship with the US film artist Matthew Barney, from which a joint daughter emerged, broke down after 13 years. The result is an unusually intimate album, new territory for Björk. In it she turns her gaze to her inner life and addresses her words directly to the second person who has thrown her life out of joint. Each of the nine songs reflects an emotional state on the path of suffering before separation and the state afterwards. "A complete heartbreak album" was "Vulnicura", the songwriter noted on Facebook. And she would not be Björk if she would not forge a concept out of the painful material.
