Mie Olise Kjærgaard’s work unfolds in large-scale paintings and sculptural environments where women take center stage — in motion, in formation, and in acts of transformation. These women are not posed but present. They sail, skate, ride, build, and play music on improvised instruments — often with children balanced on their backs or held in their arms — and always with a sense of urgency, joy and defiance. They risk everything in the moment of doing. They dare to fall in order to fly.
At the core of Kjærgaard’s work is an insistence on agency and the female body as an active, intuitive force. Her figures inhabit unstable architectures, surreal domestic spaces, or half-constructed vessels, moving through environments that mirror psychological and emotional interiors. Through gestures that are at once physical and symbolic, her subjects build, collapse, adapt, and reimagine. There is always a charge — of freedom, danger, rebellion, and play — and a refusal to conform to a stable or passive role.
Her painterly language is raw, gestural, and generous in scale. The surface becomes a field of resistance and presence, where women act as full, sovereign subjects. Humor cuts through the seriousness — not as a softener, but as a sharper tool. Within her worlds, music becomes movement, and movement becomes meaning. These are not narratives of perfection or triumph, but of persistence, invention, and the courage to act, even — and especially — when the ground is unstable.
Mie Olise Kjærgaard (b. 1974, Mors, Denmark) holds an MFA from Central Saint Martins in London and a Master in architecture from Aarhus and the Bartlett School of Architecture. At the moment Olise has her first major Museum show, Agile Aggressions, at Trapholt in Denmark. She was Chloe Arts first selected artist in 2024-25, and has exhibited internationally, including solo shows at The Journal Gallery in New York, Various Small Fires in Dallas, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, UMOCA, The Foundry in Seoul, Hans Alf Gallery in Copenhagen and Barbara Davis Gallery in Houston.
Her work is represented in public and private collections such as the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The Ny Carlsberg Foundation, Philara Sammlung Düsseldorf, The Rema Hort Foundation and JP Morgan Chase.
She has participated in residencies including Skowhegan, ISCP New York, Art OMI and has received support from the Danish Arts Foundation and the Ny Carlsberg Foundation. She lives and works in Copenhagen.
Selected Reviews:
Selected Texts:
ALLEGORIES OF RUINS AND THE INEVITABLE UTOPIAS OF ABANDONMENT, Text by Tina Dicarlo
THE VISUAL RE-INTERPRETATION OF LOST PARADISE, Text by Oliver Orest Tschirky
Deceitful Strategies, Text by Lisbeth Bonde
NOPLACIA, Text by Jens Soneryd
STOWED AWAY, Text by Brian Dillon
NARRATIVE ART, Text by Camilla Jalving