Intrusive Thoughts

Edmonton artist Riisa Gundesen confronts mental illness in visceral self-portraits.

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We live in the midst of a silent epidemic. Mental health issues afflict as many as one in five Canadians in any given year. Yet depression and anxiety, among other illnesses, are still shrouded in secrecy, sealed away in the privacy of our homes.

Riisa Gundesen’s two nearly simultaneous exhibitions at artist-run centres, Intrusive Thoughts: Self-Portraits, at Gallery Gachet in Vancouver until March 16, and Portrait of the Artist, at Harcourt House in Edmonton to April 13, throw open the door.

Gundesen confronts the harsh realities of depression in the raw immediacy of her selfie-inspired portraits. Her chosen settings are the antithesis of Architectural Digest: she shows dripping stains in the bathroom sink, a beer can in tangled bed sheets and a garbage-strewn bedroom floor. It’s the way her home looks during her bouts of depression.

Yet, such messy surroundings pale in comparison to the inner struggles Gundesen’s paintings reveal. They could be interpreted as the ancient battle between good and evil, or, alternatively, through the lens of more recent philosophical writings by Bulgarian-French psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva.

Gundesen read Kristeva’s Powers of Horror in 2017 while completing her Master’s degree in fine arts at the University of Saskatchewan. Kristeva’s concept of abjection both deepened her understanding of depression and triggered this body of work.

Abjection is defined as “ the state of being cast off” and represents the vile, frightening and repressed forces that sometimes break through our carefully constructed defences.

For example, Gundesen’s Susanna and the Elders is, in some ways, a classic female nude. Artists, including Giovanni Bellini in his Young Woman at Her Toilette or Peter Paul Rubens’ Venus at a Mirror, have explored (or exploited) this theme incessantly.

Like the women in these historical works, Gundesen leans gracefully towards a mirror. Her exposed torso and hands, as well as the arch of her neck, are rendered in the best French-salon genre.

But the idealized beauty at the centre of the composition transforms in the peripheries. The thighs become splashes of cadmium red delineated with harsh expressionist strokes. Blood-coloured drips stream from the vaginal area. The reflection in the mirror is the most alarming of all: the formulaic beauty in the foreground reflects deformed and monstrous features.

Viewers may well recoil from these works. But even as bodily fluids and rotting food repel, the virtuosic depictions of the female form compel us to look. Such oppositional reactions echo Kristeva’s notions about the repressed realities that can sometimes overwhelm our lives.

While philosophical ideas underpin Gundesen’s paintings, her works are visceral and relatable. The amorphous feelings of depression become visual metaphors: her brush articulates the doubts and fears we try to ignore. The enemy within is made visible and, perhaps for some of us, less alien and frightening. ■

Intrusive Thoughts: Self-Portraits is at Gallery Gachet in Vancouver from Jan. 25 to March 16, 2019. Portrait of the Artist is at Harcourt House in Edmonton from March 1 to April 13, 2019.

Gallery Gachet

9 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, British Columbia V6B 1G4

604-687-2468

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