Ida Thorhauge: A Storm Within

Throughout her career, Ida Thorhauge has explored the female figure in many different constellations. In her most recent major museum exhibition Goddesses at the Museum of Religious Art in Lemvig, Thorhauge, for example, investigated the mother-child motif, as well as works that focus on art history’s preoccupation with the complex relationship between women and the mythical creature, the unicorn. In other paintings, she has explored the female community across generations or the shared fate between nature and humanity.

In her new body of work for the exhibition A Storm Within at Wilson Saplana Gallery, Ida Thorhauge takes a fresh approach to her practice, allowing the women to stand alone—strong and stoic—within the frame. There is something new at play, even though the paintings unmistakably bear Thorhauge’s signature. Like her previous works, they are painted with presence, vibrant colors, and bold brushstrokes. The figures’ bodies are broad, firmly grounded in the earth, with large, expressive hands that convey a clear sense of gesture.

Rather than exploring inner psychology, Ida Thorhauge’s new works present a projection of personas and stereotypes that are depicted in our collective cultural imagination. Other examples of identity’s plasticity can be found in the work of American artist Cindy Sherman, who also engages with imitating culture-defining images and concepts. Sherman uses herself in disguises, portraying all kinds of different types of women, which ultimately converge in one woman—herself. However, in Thorhauge’s new paintings, there is more at play. We see depictions of women who all stand, or almost float, within the pictorial space, without a background or much context. Their feet are hidden, and their bodies are only suggested through the expressive strokes in the colorful dresses. It is instead the gaze, the hands, the choice of colors, and a few added elements that tell the story of women we already feel we know from images of Madonnas, Ophelia narratives, moods from the Brontë sisters, Edvard Munch, Japanese manga, the Bloomsbury Group, and much more. Yet, they remain unfamiliar, and must be rediscovered—perhaps on their own terms.

The exhibition is supported by The Danish Arts Foundation.