Tanja Nis-Hansen Explores Language and the Female Body at Kasseler Kunstverein

In her exhibition 'What an Old Woman Will Wear' at Kasseler Kunstverein, Tanja Nis-Hansen presents thirty paintings that form the letters G-R-W-M (Get Ready With Me) suspended in mid-air. The works juxtapose fragmented images—a dodo, windmill, eye, apple, and bodiless limbs—with imperative sentence fragments, creating a hieroglyphic mode of communication. The apple recurs as a symbol of sin, temptation, fertility, and health. Nis-Hansen shifts from her earlier focus on illness and liminal spaces to address the female body's representation in visual culture and language. The exhibition references Freud's free association and Derrida's critique of writing as pharmakon, exploring how language fails to capture existence. The paintings extend beyond the picture plane, revealing their bulky undersides, and invite viewers into the monetized private realm of online beauty routines. The show runs at Kasseler Kunstverein in Kassel, Germany.