Therése Hurtig

b. 1987, Norrköping, Sweden

Bo Peep? Ah ha ha ha!, 2023
Series of four paintings: oil on linen canvas

Therése Hurtig works primarily with painting and drawing, often rooted in nostalgia and popular culture. She is interested in the primitive, instinctive and irrational aspects of humans. She sees creativity as a way of unravelling and trying to understand the psychological contradictions inherent in human nature.

The work Bo Peep? Ah ha ha ha! consists of a series of paintings based on scenes from Walt Disney’s The Three Little Pigs. The pigs’ bare bottoms fleeing from the Big Bad Wolf aroused strange feelings of lust and disgust in Hurtig as a child. She would later realise that this was a kind of sexual awakening. Throughout the process, she has focused on concepts such as ‘taboo’ and ‘contemporary’ and on how the influence of the surrounding world shapes a person as they grow up. The question she asks is when do society’s social structures and norms become intertwined with, or even conquer, our innate, instinctive desires and urges?

See the interview with Therése Hurtig.