Thordis Adalsteinsdottir (b. 1975, Reykjavik) is an Icelandic painter whose work blends playful surrealism with dark social critique. Educated at the Icelandic Academy of Arts and the School of Visual Arts in New York, she creates flat, expressive scenes populated by anthropomorphic animals, disjointed human figures, and everyday objects—milk cartons, smartphones, mushrooms—that double as potent visual metaphors. Her paintings frequently explore themes of ecological collapse, digital dependency, consumerism, and societal anxiety, often drawing inspiration from her immediate environment, conversations, the news and current events. Despite their cartoonish appearance, her compositions evoke a sense of dread, absurdity, and melancholic humor.

Adalsteinsdottir’s work has been widely exhibited in Europe, Asia, and the United States, with recent solo shows at Nunu Fine Art in New York and Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Los Angeles. Her visual language is rooted in repetition and symbolic layering—images of dogs strapped with bombs, cats spraying milk, and polar bears drinking beer recur across her canvases. She uses these motifs to highlight the surreal nature of modern life, offering a kind of apocalyptic folklore for the digital age. Through her distinct style, Adalsteinsdottir captures a world teetering between the whimsical and the catastrophic.