Indland ( https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland )
********************************************************************************************
*Locked up for 56 years and cut off his penis:* Noah believes everyone should know Danish 'art icon'
********************************************************************************************
A new art exhibition is inspired by the artist Ovartaci, who was transgender and spent most of his life in a psychiatric ward.
Noah Umur Kanber has created her first major Danish art exhibition in Aarhus. (Photo: © Camilla Wichmann ) 47 min. ago
56 years locked up in a psychiatric ward was the reality for a prominent artist from the 20th century.
The artist Ovartaci, whose legal name was Louis Marcussen, was an artist who stood out in many ways in the 1900s.
Ovartaci was transgender and lived as both a man and a woman. He spent most of his life in a psychiatric ward in Risskov, and it was especially during his time as a patient that he created art that questioned the world around him.
Ovartaci in his room. (Photo: © Museum Ovartaci )
For the artist Noah Umur Kenber, Ovartaci is an art icon, and that is precisely why she hopes that with a new exhibition she can challenge the views we have on gender and identity – and get more people to discover Ovartaci.
The two artists are from different eras but have a great deal in common. This is now depicted through the exhibition, which is based on both Ovartaci's life and Noah's own experiences.
-------------------
56 symbolic dolls
-------------------
34-year-old Noah Umur Kenber is known, among other things, from the TV programs Kunstnerkolonien and Forræder.
She is also transgender herself and sees several similarities between herself and Ovartaci, who died in 1985.
And she refers to Ovartaci as "she," because she considers Ovartaci a woman.
- In the exhibition, I have chosen to focus on the period when she lived as a woman. She was from a time when being transgender was a mental illness and when one was hospitalized for it, says Noah Umur Kanber.
Noah Umur Kanber depicts, among other things, the challenges Ovartaci faced through a work consisting of 56 dolls.
One doll for each year Ovartaci was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward.
- What characterizes Ovartaci's works is many dolls, and the dolls became "friends" to her, and I wanted to explore that connection, says Noah Umur Kanber.
"The Friends," which are part of the artwork "The Madman Has Broken Loose." (Photo: © Camilla Wichmann )
-----------------
Cut off his penis
-----------------
In many ways, Ovartaci broke with the norms and values of his time. For that reason, he also spent most of his life in a psychiatric ward, where he gave himself the name "Overtosse." A name that later evolved into Ovartaci.
Ovartaci was originally hospitalized due to suspicion that he suffered from schizophrenia. But that diagnosis was far from Ovartaci's only challenge in dealing with the system.
In the 1950s, Ovartaci in many ways struggled to escape what he himself called his sexual urges toward women.
Among other things, he sought to do this by transforming himself into a woman, and in 1954 he cut off his penis with a hammer and chisel in the hospital's carpentry workshop.
Ovartaci during the time he identified as a woman. (Photo: © Museum Ovartaci )
Later, Ovartaci underwent gender reassignment surgery and at the same time requested to be transferred to a women's ward.
Ovartaci lived as a woman for about 15 years, but when he was in his 70s, he began to distance himself from the female identity and wanted to be referred to as a man again.
---------------------
She was ahead of her time
---------------------
The struggle that Ovartaci fought against society to be allowed to undergo the transformation from man to woman is something Noah Umur Kanber believes is also relevant in our time today.
- The struggle she had to fight to be allowed to exist is not something only I can recognize, but that all queer people can. It is a constant struggle we fight to convince society of our right and value to also be here, says Noah Umur Kanber.
The art exhibition "Cuckoo, Cuckoo, Is It Me Who Is Crazy?" can be seen at Museum Ovartaci in Aarhus until April 2027.
Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=undefined )
Warning: This article was translated by a Large Language Model, in case of doubt, you can always visit the original source.