Kirsten Justesen (1943- ) and Jytte Rex (1942- ), Sleeping Beauty, 1971

Internationally Justesen and Rex are among the pioneers in the endeavours to add a Feminist perspective to avant-garde art.

In the film Sleeping beauty they applied what was at the time a radical, female gaze on reality by letting seven women of varying ages present their dreams and yearnings in realistic and stylised tableaux.

Erotic life

The core of the scenes often concerns erotic life: An older woman wearing suspenders and a bra talks about her lovers as she lounges in her sofa, stroking her fur coat. A young woman is breastfeeding her child while musing on the subject of orgasms, and a middle-aged woman is dancing a waltz with herself.

The social and political reality

But social and political reality is also described in bizarre ways – e.g. by a young girl playing with her doll’s house, and by an old woman sitting in a vast, open landscape, knitting political events of the world into her work.