Ragnar Kjartansson (b. 1976, Reykjavík, Iceland; lives and works in Reykjavik, Iceland) is an internationally recognized artist whose video installations combine theater and music with folklore and art-historical reference. Sunday Without Love is a single-channel video of a performance that took place in September 2025 on the Renon Plateau in Northern Italy, originally commissioned by the TRANSART festival in Bolzano, Italy. The work was inspired by a 1960s kitschy idyllic postcard of people relaxing in a park. It is projected room-size to immerse the viewer in image and sound. 

The performers in the video repeatedly sing a fragile chorus adapted by the artist and collaborator Davíð Þór Jónsson from a 1990s German song, Ohne Liebe Leben Lernen(Learning to Live Without Love) by entertainer Rocko Schamoni. Over and over, Kjartansson and his nine performers gently sing, “You must learn to live without love/Love is not good for you. Stop all this longing, / looking at stars. / Stay on the ground. / Hear what I say.” The lyrics of cynical resignation seem ill-matched with the idyllic pastoral setting. Sunday Without Love evokes the conventions of Romantic-era painting while simultaneously undermining them. The performers’ traditional costumes and static arrangement create a tableau that feels tender and suspended in time, sensations that are disrupted by sound and gentle motion, a disruptive reminder of the artist’s construction.