Strude
by Trine Søndergaard
"My work with Strude began at a local museum on a small Danish island
where women’s folk dresses were exhibited on faceless cloth dummies.
The colours were intense and the detail intricate,
but it was the mask-like hood that drew my eye.
A garment called a ‘strude’, worn by women in the past to protect
their faces against the elements and still worn at the annual fête
I returned to year after year to make the work.
...
Here the covered faces and tightly buttoned dresses in Strude are highly resonant.
The ‘strude’ clearly delineates what is hidden and
raises the question of what is exposed in the image.
What is said and unsaid.
Just as the codes of the dresses remain an island secret for the uninitiated,
I wanted to explore what happens when the meeting between
the gaze of the subject and the viewer is deflected and denied."
...
The complete text can be found on the website of Trine Sondergaard.
