Refugees At Sea 1979

Curator: Here we have Odd Nerdrum’s 1979 oil painting, "Refugees At Sea." Its baroque styling immediately recalls images of exile, hardship, and humanity's fraught relationship with nature and with each other. Editor: It looks like a nightmare. A dark, crowded, swirling…pile. Like bodies struggling to get out of a grave. There’s a real sense of desperation, doesn't it make you feel seasick just looking at it? Curator: Indeed. And considering the socio-political climate of the late 70s—replete with its global crises of forced displacement—Nerdrum captures the very visceral essence of precarity. It really forces you to consider the intersection of survival, politics, and visual representation. Editor: I notice they are packed onto what looks like a very unstable vessel, really a flimsy little boat with what appear to be more than just refugees. The range of facial expressions, from utter terror to stoic resignation is stunningly bleak. Curator: Right, this speaks to Nerdrum's narrative ambitions, but more so I think to a genre painting. What is really on display here is a kind of raw confrontation with suffering. And of course, like so much in Realism, it’s about raising uncomfortable questions. Editor: Absolutely. Does he idealize their suffering? Does he romanticize? There's a raw realism but a definite layer of dramatization—those stark contrasts feel both terrifying and…somehow alluring? It gives me a mixed response for sure, but there is an inherent struggle being portrait. Curator: A fair point to say the least! And what you get from the work ultimately speaks to how you position yourself—or not—in solidarity with the very real history that these figures recall. It begs us to ask ourselves, is solidarity truly possible when mediated through aesthetic consumption? Editor: And in this dark canvas, are we witnessing something akin to historical reenactment, or the enduring resonance of trauma itself? Well, both these questions, I will now bring home to explore in my works. Curator: An apropos note on which to conclude our brief reflection on Nerdrum's potent work.