Full Arch
Towards the light
Red dream
Blinded
Wandering Womb
Where we have slept
You must close the circle
Landscape
Born this way
Wild rose virus
Beautiful Exorcism
The Exorcism Collection
The Hand that Brushed
The Palm Tree Collection
My African Letters
Full Arch is the description of a woman dancing, sitting, lying, standing on her legs or knees with an arched back, her sexual organs exposed. The pose is aimed at the gaze of the viewer and it signals both submission and control. The pose appears throughout art history, in depictions of religious ecstasy, demonic possession and in the pathological term “hysteria” as well as in contemporary popular culture, where female pop stars play with the borders between sexualised power and the objectification of the male gaze on stage and in videos. The fierceness, the staged ecstasy is at the same time is both alluring and a balancing act on the verge of insanity. In Ditte Ejlerskov’s paintings a complex study appears, where the physical pose and its double implications are repeated until they stand out as a practice of exorcism, a process of expulsion. The repeated act is at the same time the subject used throughout art history as a proof of the function of exorcism and the treatment for “pathological hysteria”. The artist plays with the ideas of what contemporary demons the female pop stars are trying to exorcise with their poses and what is to gain in the staged performance.
Parallel to the studies of the pose there is the sadness and entrapment, in empty beds with messy sheets, women hiding behind closed curtains, couples turned away from each other on opposite sides of a bed. The alienation and loneliness that appears from the complicated balancing act between sexual power and diagnosed madness. The contrast between the woman on the stage and the woman behind the curtains that at a first glance appear steep but at a closer study seems to tell the same story. The image material is gathered from Facebook, the artist’s own camera, from art history and popular culture such as music videos, documented stage performance or photojournalism.
by Katarina Sjögren and Jun-Hi Wennergren Nordling
(For the exhibition Full Arch at CRYSTAL November 11 - December 17, 2011)
You must close the circle
24 cm x 33 cm, oil on canvas, 2011
