Maja Malou Lyse is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores themes regarding the complexities of identity, body image, pleasure politics and social dynamics through an incredibly immersive practice. Regularly using alternative platforms which are deeply embedded in our daily lives—such as magazines, television shows and digital media—Lyse’s practice highlights the ways in which our desires are deeply connected to the cultural and political realities of our time.
Playing with elements of pop culture as well as the visual iconography of the platforms she uses, Lyse creates informative works with a tongue-in-cheek humour. Lyse often draws inspiration from satire, using parody and sarcasm to express messages in her art.
Eschewing overly negative and positive positions concerning sexuality within feminist traditions, Lyse focus instead on the nuances and dwell on the open ended questions and realities that lie in the ambiguous and uncertain in-between. Underlining that there is no “one size fits all” solution to the overarching themes she investigates, Lyse does not put forward answers herself. Rather, she encourages us to learn, to engage, and to begin and to try and put language to our own personal experiences. Lyse appears simultaneously before, behind and beside the camera, eloquently bringing our attention to question the normative processes of identification, objectification and the aesthetics of desire to underline the problematics of representation politics and power dynamics within our image consumption. Lyse’s works open themselves up to larger discussions around imagery and visual content in our contemporary world. How do the images that maintain a constant presence in our lives influence the way we behave and the way we look at ourselves?
Maja Malou Lyse (b. 1993, Denmark) graduated with a Masters of Fine Arts from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2022. She has had a solo exhibition at Brandts Kunst Museum (Odense), and participated in group shows at the National Gallery of Denmark (Copenhagen), the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), Copenhagen Contemporary (Copenhagen), Blueproject Foundation (Barcelona), Moderna Museet (Stockholm), ARoS (Aarhus), Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Copenhagen), and Museum of Contemporary Art (Roskilde) among others. From 2018-2019, Lyse had a tv show “Sex med Maja” (Sex med Maja) on DR—the Danish Broadcasting Corporation. The gallery looks forward to opening our first solo with Lyse in November 2023.
