Me, Blue Woman in the Sun (After Kirchner), 2023
Natalya Hughes
- Sitter: Natalya Hughes
- Medium: Acrylic on polyester
- Dimensions: 162cm x 142cm
- Representation: Sullivan+Strumpf
2025 Highly Commended
About the artwork
This self-portrait is based on the 1910 painting Blue Girl in the Sun by German Expressionist painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. It is part of a series of works addressing issues around Kirchner’s paintings of young female muses, including sexualisation of minors, exploitation and power imbalances.
In this work, the artist continues her exploration of the representation of women in art history, the place of the female figure within the evolution of modernism, and the capacity of decorative and ornamental form.
“Where previously I have repainted Kirchner’s sitters, combining Kirchner’s distorted painterly compositions with a flat repetitive decorative language more akin to craft, here I paint myself into the scene. In this work, I am interested in subverting expectations of artist and sitter, revered male genius and female muse. In this painting, I am the subject of the work (subjected to formal experimentation) and the artist who has something to say.”
About the artist
Brisbane based artist Natalya Hughes’ multidisciplinary practice examines decorative and ornamental traditions and their associations with the feminine, the body and excess. She completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts at the Queensland University of Technology and a PhD in Art Theory at UNSW College of Fine Art. She lectures at Queensland College of Art and is represented by Sullivan + Strumpf in Sydney.
