MUNTHE ART MONDAY:
ANNA SOFIE

Please introduce yourself and tell us about what you do.

My name is Anna Sofie Jespersen. I am a Danish visual artist based in New York. I create oil paintings that often reference various aspects of both popular and less mainstream culture, as well as literature and history.

Anna Sofie is wearing our BAYNOR TOP and ROLUKE BAG W HANDLE.

Can you name some other female (artist) that inspires you and explain why they do so?

At the moment, I am rewatching many films by the French director Catherine Breillat. She manages to portray the feminine experience and consciousness in a way that is both very ugly and very beautiful at the same time. That is difficult to achieve. Her 2001 film Fat Girl is a deeply moving coming-of-age portrait of the feminine experience.

What would you like people to notice in your artwork?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Human beings are condemned to exist under the conditions they have been given. I would like to insist on the contradictory and troublesome realities of those conditions. I believe one should try, as far as possible, to take the good with the bad.

Could you explain more about how being a woman has affected your career?

Women know that they are going to die. Men do not. From puberty, women become aware that their bodies belong to an ecosystem, that they are not entirely their own. Men spend their lives trying to evade this reality - for example, by having a much younger partner, buying an exciting and expensive machine, or building a skyscraper.

I believe I may have been able to touch on subjects that often make both men and women uncomfortable, because I approach them from a feminine perspective.

Anna Sofie is wearing our BAYNOR TOP.

What has been the most challenging aspect of being a woman in the arts?

To be beautiful and mad. Men are allowed to be mad without being held accountable for their sexual capital in the same way. In many ways, I am grateful to have cultivated an artistic practice, so that I have something to devote myself to when I reach menopause.