She Suffers So Much More

THORDIS ADALSTEINSDOTTIR, FRANCES GOODMAN, MARTHA HVIID

March 15 - April 20, 2024

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SPECTA’s new exhibition borrows its title She Suffers So Much More from the fairytale The Little Mermaid by Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen from 1837. A number of themes are embedded in the fairytale and this is the gallery’s first exhibition of more to come with a basis in The Little Mermaid. The works presented deal with bodily manifestations of modification, transformation and of being in between different states.

In a series of sculptural objects, Danish artist Martha Hviid introduces what seems to be parts of a body, detached from each other. Looking soft and white it feels like we get just glimpses of them, as if whirling around and surfacing now and then. The series of objects resemble an ongoing transformation, which may or may not form a collected whole in the end. The body is either dissolving or on the way to be unified in a new form.

Two paintings by Thordis Adalsteinsdottir reflect on being in between two worlds. In Upstairs Neighbor we meet an individual, wearing nothing but a pair of high heeled shoes, a bowling ball in one hand and a martini in the other. The person in the painting doesn’t fit with traditionalist binary gaze: is it a man or a woman we are presented to? In Adalsteinsdottir’s painting we are presented to a human being: an upstairs neighbor.
Another larger painting by Adalsteinsdottir mimics Liberty Leading the People by Delacroix, however, the French flag is replaced by a pot of boiled bananas, and an eagle is feeding off the breast of the woman, and basically eating off the nipple and skin. In Adalsteinsdottir’s painting, the woman is caught between freedom/liberty and an old fashioned female role as caretaker.

In a large sequin painting, Frances Goodman depicts a mermaid; a vision of the feminine, seducing and beautiful figure, as many myths have described. This mermaid, however, sits on land surrounded by a lush green garden, and the painting is entitled Siren of the Swimmingpool. In that way, there is a subtle nod to the impossibility of the hybrid creature. As in the fairytale, the mermaid cannot be her full character and live on land. Something must be sacrificed, she must give up on vital keys to her own being, in order to pursue the prince, she has fallen in love with.
Three photographic works from Frances Goodman’s Vajazzles-series show a very direct way of modification of the contemporary female body, made with the purpose of being attractive to a partner’s gaze.

The original fairytale about The Little Mermaid is very unlike today’s Disney versions... In the original story, the mermaid doesn’t get her prince in the end, and she is forced to make choices, sacrifice and to define and re-define her position. The physical body of the mermaid is the obvious symbol of a complex set of choices, desires and struggles which are fundamental to many of us.