With this odalisque, Natasja Kensmil refers to the age-old tradition of female nudity, but her version does not eroticise like the male ideal of beauty. The dark colours and hard, grainy layers of paint make the concubine look cold and deathlike. This is typical of the approach in her paintings which Kensmil uses to look critically at the past and expose the ambiguity that lies between beauty and horror. [text 2024]