Naked Dance 

Artist Statement

I paint and draw my own naked body dancing in iridescent fleshy layers, while deconstructing my vulnerability as a human. My three passions - dance, draw and paint - shape the process of my art practise into a cycle that I repeat until certain overwhelming feelings, which ignited the process in the first place, are dealt with. I call this project Naked Dance, using the term ‘naked’ both metaphorically and literally, as I explore the vulnerability of my own being. 

I choreographed a dance to the song Anti-Hero by Taylor Swift, and filmed myself dancing it. The video is the first artwork within the project, and the muse for the following drawings, paintings and video installations. I chose the song because it is relatable to me in my experience of dealing with General Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and ADHD while navigating life as a woman and artist.

The song reveals the kind of evil thoughts that can keep one up at night, while battling your own ‘monster’ within, that often is one’s own worse enemy. In the video I am dancing in white underwear, on a pink rug, with a white sheet wrapped around me. The setting hints towards a bedroom - the kind of intimate space where a semi-nude dance might happen, and the space where evil thoughts can flourish in the night.

The dance, that begins with me wrapped up in a sheet that gradually comes off, convey the process of waking up by one’s own thoughts while sleeping. The sheet covers most part of my body at the beginning of the performance while I move inside it, pointing towards the early stage of hearing thoughts while asleep. The sheet gradually covers less skin, as one start to battle the thoughts that are disrupting ones sleep. Eventually the sheet is thrown off completely, as one wakes up, still battling the same thoughts. So while the battle continues, I keep on dancing.

From screenshots of the dance video comes several series of paintings. Displayed chronologically like film reels, so that the viewer gets a sense of the choreography and the story behind the dance. I paint myself naked in the paintings, although, I am in underwear in the video. 

Since most social media forbid nudity except in art - art is a form of clothing. I strip one layer of clothing off while putting another on. Testing the limits of how naked, or vulnerable, I can be. I work in layers of one colour at a time when I paint human flesh. Through the layers I deconstruct what colours human skin is made of, and metaphorically, the skins vulnerability. A fragile surface that is the shelter of human mind body and soul.

Cecilia Ulfsdotter