Erla Haraldsdottir was born in Reykjavík, she currently lives and works in Berlin. Haraldsdottir was a guest professor at the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts, Sweden. She studied at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm and the San Francisco Arts Institute with a degree from the Valand Academy of Fine Art in Gothenburg in 1998.

Her works often explore how memories, emotions, and perception interact. Methodology is central and Haraldsdóttir’s process-driven work is often based on a combination of rules and restrictions, places or stories, and tasks assigned to her by other people