Roni Horn was born on September 25, 1955. She is an American artist and writer. She is a descendant of immigrants from Eastern Europe and was born in New York City, where she continues to live and work. She is represented by Xavier Hufkens in Brussels and Hauser & Wirth. She is openly gay.
Early life and education
Horn was born on September 25, 1955, in New York City. She was named after her grandmothers, who both had the name Rose. In a 2009 interview, Horn said that her gender-neutral name was helpful, explaining, "when I was young, I decided that people shouldn't know my gender."
She grew up in Rockland County, New York.
Horn finished high school early and began studying at the Rhode Island School of Design at age 16. She earned a BFA in 1975 at age 19. She described her "short time" in Providence, saying, "I had a studio in a poor neighborhood with very little daylight. It was dangerous and sad."
Horn received an MFA in sculpture from Yale University in 1978. Since 1975, she has visited Iceland often. The country's landscape and quiet life have greatly influenced her work. In 2023, she received Icelandic citizenship through a decision by the Icelandic parliament.
Work and recognition
Roni Horn has been deeply connected to Iceland’s unique geography, geology, climate, and culture. She first visited Iceland in the 1970s. As a young arts graduate, she traveled there on a fellowship from Yale. Since then, she has returned to Iceland many times.
A series of books called To Place (1990–) focuses on Iceland.
Bluff Life (1990) includes 13 watercolor and graphite drawings. It was created in 1982 during a two-month stay in a lighthouse near Dyrhólaey, a town on Iceland’s southern coast. All the drawings were made on note cards. Folds (1991) is a book of photographs showing old sheepfolds. To Place: Verne's Journey (1995) is the fifth book in the series. Arctic Circles (1998), the seventh book, is a photographic essay that includes images of the North Sea’s horizon, eider duck feathers, and a lighthouse beacon. Doubt Box (Book IX) (2006) is a collection of cards showing pictures of glacial water, taxidermied birds, and a face.
Between 2004 and 2006, the To Place books were chosen as some of the most important photobooks in history. A 2009 article said the nine books "form one of the most important groups of artists’ books since the 1960s works of Ed Ruscha and the publications of Bernd and Hilla Becher on industrial buildings." Other books Horn created include Dictionary of Water, This is Me, This is You, Cabinet of, If on a Winter’s Night, Her, Her, Her, & Her, Wonderwater (Alice Offshore), and Index Cixous, 2003–05.
Weather has influenced Horn’s work. She made public art, such as You Are the Weather—Munich (1996–97), a permanent installation for the Deutscher Wetterdienst in Munich. You in You (1997) is a rubber-tiled walkway in Basel’s train station that mimics Iceland’s basalt formations. Some Thames (2000) is an installation at the University of Akureyri in Iceland with 80 photos of water placed around the campus. In 2007, Horn created Vatnasafn / Library of Water, an installation in Stykkishólmur, Iceland. It uses water collected from Icelandic glaciers.
The Library of Water is in a former library building in Stykkishólmur. Horn noticed the building in the 1990s. It sits high in the town, overlooking the harbor. She planned the installation in 2004 as both a sculpture and a community space.
In 2004, Horn’s installation Agua Viva was displayed at Hauser & Wirth in London as part of the Rings of Lispector exhibition. The installation used rubber tiles with text from Hélène Cixous’s translation of Clarice Lispector’s Agua Viva. The text was arranged in loops and rings on a floor covering 1,500 square feet. Each tile was 69 inches square, and the piece included 25 "rubber floor drawings."
Hélène Cixous wrote a book about the Agua Viva installation.
Horn’s first photographic installation, You Are the Weather (1994–1996), features 100 close-up photos of the same woman, Margret, in Icelandic geothermal pools. Notes about this work were included in a 2009 book titled Roni Horn aka Roni Horn. The book has a two-volume format and includes a Subject Index with writings about Horn’s work. Curator Donna De Salvo said, "You Are the Weather shows a living thing, not an object. Horn made the face look like it is not just a surface. The photos are slightly different, so viewers must look closely to see the small changes."
Many of the You Are the Weather images were included in a To Place book. You Are the Weather, Part 2 follows the same format and uses the same model, 15 years later.
Pi (1998) is an installation with 45 color photos displayed on all four walls of the Matthew Marks Gallery in New York. The photos were taken in Iceland over six years.
Still Water (The River Thames, for Example) (1999) is a single work made of 15 photographic offset lithographs. Each is 30 + 1⁄2 x 41 + 1⁄2 inches. It is in the Museum of Modern Art’s collection. Horn created it around 1998, at the end of a long relationship. Each lithograph shows the River Thames’ surface with small white numbers that match footnotes along the bottom.
Félix González-Torres saw Horn’s sculpture Forms from the Gold Field in 1990 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. In 1993, he made Untitled (Placebo-Landscape-for Roni). In response, Horn created Gold Mats, Paired-For Ross and Felix (1994–1995), dedicated to González-Torres and his partner, Ross Laycock.
Horn’s 1993 series When Dickinson shut her eyes includes eight aluminum poles of different lengths leaning against a wall. Each pole has a line from Emily Dickinson’s poem A Wind that rose.
Pink Tons (2008) is a solid glass cube measuring 1219 x 1219 x 1219 mm, weighing 4536 kg. It was made by Schott, a German glass company Horn has worked with since her student years. Schott also made the columns for her Library of Water in Iceland.
Well and Truly (2009–2010) is a work with ten solid glass parts, each 91.5 cm in diameter and 45.5 cm tall. The glass pieces are blue and pale blue green. It is part of a private collection but was shown at Kunsthaus Bregenz in 2010.
Horn was one of the artists featured on PBS’ Art:21 series, which shares stories about modern artists.
Exhibitions
Roni Horn's first solo exhibition outside the university was held in 1980 at the Kunstraum München. Her career grew quickly during the late 1980s with two exhibitions in New York at the Paula Cooper and Leo Castelli galleries. In 1998, she received the CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts. She also earned NEA fellowships in 1984, 1986, and 1990, as well as a Guggenheim fellowship in 1990. Horn has had solo exhibitions at several major museums, including the Nasher Sculpture Center (2017), the Art Institute of Chicago (2004), Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (2003), Dia Center for the Arts in New York, Museu Serralves in Porto (2001), the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Kunsthalle Basel (1995), the Rencontres d'Arles festival in France (2009), and Tate Modern in London (2009). She has also participated in group exhibitions such as the Whitney Biennial (1991, 2004), Documenta (1992), and the Venice Biennale (1997). In 2004, she was a visiting critic at Columbia University.
In November 2009, the Whitney Museum of American Art opened a major exhibition of Horn's work titled "Roni Horn aka Roni Horn." The exhibition later traveled to the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston (2010), Tate Modern in London (February 25–May 25, 2009), and the Collection Lambert in Avignon (June 21–October 4, 2009).
In 2016, Horn had a solo exhibition at De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art in Tilburg, the Netherlands. In February 2019, The Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, held a two-part solo exhibition titled "When I Breathe, I Draw." The first part featured large-scale works on paper, and the second part displayed works made through cutting, shown in the Menil Drawing Institute's main gallery. Horn also created a wall drawing called "Wits' End Sampler" for the Menil Drawing Institute's entry space.
In 2024, Horn had a solo exhibition at Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany, and her first major retrospective in the Nordic countries at Louisiana Museum of Art in Humlebæk, Denmark.
From September 12, 2025, to February 15, 2026, the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver displayed an exhibition titled "Roni Horn: Water, Water on the Wall, You're the Fairest of Them All." The exhibit included a variety of Horn's works, such as photography and sculpture, and focused on the theme of water.