“The female cycle is a superpower; every day is a new day”

- Bolatta Silis-Høegh

She Sees What We Conceal, and Gives It Form. Meet visual artist Bolatta Silis-Høegh, who, with compassion and artistic courage, brings the shadows of the past into the light, opening up spaces for healing, reconciliation, and a strengthened sense of self-worth.

artSIStra interview // Henriette Hellstern // October 7. 2026 // Vesterbro // Denmark

Her work is not guided by random assumptions or guesswork. She sees. She sees behind the mask and the façade, and seems to know what one keeps hidden. Her gaze is perpetually sharp, analytical, almost supernatural.

Masquerade

In the heart of Vesterbro, visual artist Bolatta Silis-Høegh works in a space where her artistic universe unfolds across the floor, the walls, and even the ceiling, accompanied by a huge stuffed raven that keeps a watchful eye on everything.

The first work I encounter is a painting of a seashell that rises from floor to ceiling. Half open, half closed, it seems to ask: Will you come in, or will you stay outside? “I had started on a portrait, or so I thought, but the portrait wanted to be a seashell,” says the artist, throwing her arms wide as though it were an argument she had just lost. Here, one listens and senses. “The female cycle is a superpower; every day is a new day,” she emphasises, as my eyes bore into the shell.

Even as a child, she worked with hard surfaces and soft inner sides. When our conversation turns to her upbringing, I ask whether the home was a theatre. “Oh yezzz, with a z,” she replies loudly and without hesitation. An artistic household shaped by her mother’s visual art and her father’s photography was a place where she became aware of her own senses and values at an early age. “I got a balloon,” she says, handing me an invisible balloon string, “I mean, when things were difficult at home,” she elaborates. There was no room for melancholy or sadness, so outwardly she had to appear calm while trembling inside.

Artwork by Bolatta Silis-Høegh, 2026

Her True Face

My gaze settles on a portrait that the artist describes as “a three-in-one portrait”. A Kinder Surprise egg comes to mind. Two floating faces gaze down at a small human figure curled up beneath them in a fetal position. The three figures are bound together in an expression of tenderness and care. The work seems to exist outside time, holding the love that passes from one generation to the next: from grandmother to daughter, and onward to the little grandchild. We, the viewers, are invited to be held, enveloped and protected. Whether through metre-long lengths of hand-drawn fabric, old painted tablecloths inherited from her grandmother or on linen canvas, Silis-Høegh seems to wrap us in layer upon layer.

Her work is not guided by random assumptions or guesswork. She sees. She sees behind the mask and the façade, and seems to know what one keeps hidden. Her gaze is perpetually sharp, analytical, almost supernatural. Her hands become a means of expression. During a depression, she began to portray herself as a kind of diary, a determined act of moving from darkness towards light, led by a pencil on paper, slowly transformed.

Artwork by Bolatta Silis-Høegh, 2026

A Flying Start

Silis-Høegh is an artist who dreams, visualises, observes, and creates. “I am a bird; there is a lot of bird in me,” she says, continuing, “in almost all my dreams as a child, I flew over landscapes.” Even then, she saw the world from a different perspective.

It was an ability she became aware of early on. She was good at drawing, and during a year of study in New Zealand, almost as far from Kalaallit Nunaat as one can get, she lets me understand, she became better still. Her talent was so apparent that her visual arts teacher immediately recognised her potential and cleared out the back room, giving the young artist space to spread her wings.

Silis means Eurasian jay in Latvian, the artist tells me, a meaning that fits so beautifully with Høegh aka Hawk. The artist has always been airborne, moving at full speed, on her way, on a mission. “A couple of times a year, I manage to reach a place where self-consciousness disappears, and everything becomes dance, song, and painting,” she says. But even when self-consciousness is present on the many other days of the year, it does not diminish the art. We need Silis-Høegh’s nerve, courage, and spontaneity, qualities that can both heal and stir things up. We need her worlds and her stories.

Dancing in Time

Nature is ever-present in Silis-Høegh’s work, not least through a particular understanding of cycles. Circular movements appear both in the themes of her works and in her working process, as she dances around the canvas laid out on the floor. With the arrival of Christianity, drum singing was banned in Kalaallit Nunaat because it was considered pagan. Now Silis-Høegh stamps so rhythmically on the floor that the shadows of the past seem, little by little, to be loosening their grip.

For the artist, trauma is something we carry with us. “Trauma can follow you for seven generations, if it is not spoken about,” she tells me. “It is inherited epigenetically.” With courage and grace, she brings generational, collective, postcolonial and personal traumas out of the shadows and into the light. It is vulnerable, important, and cathartic.

Artwork by Bolatta Silis-Høegh, 2026

The World’s Shortest Therapy Session

Although the artist says she “gets bored quickly”, each work carries a particular gravity. “I have an extremely good portrait face,” she exclaims, and we laugh heartily at this entirely legitimate observation. When Silis-Høegh paints a face, she barely needs to touch the canvas before one senses the person’s presence. “I have a big nose and big eyes; I am both beautiful and ugly.” Most of the figures are direct reflections of the artist herself.

She then brings out a painting of a woman who is wrapped, rotating, enveloped, and protected. “The body we have been told is wrong, disgusting, and troublesome” is the body she wants to celebrate, she explains. Transitions and transformations are central narratives in her art, and it becomes clear that, according to the artist herself, we must take part in the work. “If you say it’s insanely tough, it will probably be insanely tough.” The sentence hangs in the air like an ultra-short therapy session and a wake-up call to the self-pitying interviewer.

Shit Green and Fluorescent Pink

Colour, too, moves in cycles in Silis-Høegh’s work, though not necessarily in the order we might expect. Autumn is processed in spring, and spring in autumn. Her palette draws, among other things, on memories of the past. Her father’s National Geographic magazines from the 1970s and 1980s continue to shape the colours of the present. Her daughter, meanwhile, has her own name for olive green: “shit green”.

And when muted tones do not take centre stage, the vivid universe of Mattel’s Roller Skating Barbie, from the artist’s childhood, bursts into view. “Barbie had the ultimate freedom when she roller-skated in brightly coloured clothes,” she says. I can immediately picture the young artist racing along at full speed: large earrings, hair done, a broad smile, impeccably dressed, of course. My eyes fall on a fluorescent pink daub of paint on the canvas before me.

Artwork by Bolatta Silis-Høegh, 2026

The Healing Hermaphrodite

Seen from a bird’s-eye view, a seashell resembles Kalaallit Nunaat. The hermaphrodite’s hard shell and soft core mirror an artist who contains multiple sides. “I see myself as a woman, but there is also a man in me, just as the shape of the shell in my paintings is both vulval and phallic. I am many things,” she states.

Before me stands an artist of irrepressible seriousness, carrying the histories of generations on her shoulders, with a voice that insists on being heard. Silis-Høegh calls for greater care, for a deeper willingness to listen. And she returns, again and again, to her mantra: “You don’t need external validation; love comes from within; you are good enough.”

Hun ser det, vi gemmer, og giver det form. Mød billedkunstner Bolatta Silis-Høegh, der med omsorg og kunstnerisk mod bringer fortidens skygger frem i lyset og åbner rum for heling, forsoning og styrket selvværd.

artSIStra interview // Henriette Hellstern // Okt. 7. 2026 // Vesterbro // Danmark

Det er ikke tilfældige antagelser og gætterier, hun benytter når hun arbejder. Hun ser. Hun ser bag masken og facaden og synes at vide, hvad man går og gemmer på. Hendes blik er konstant skarpt, analytisk og nærmest overnaturligt.

Maskerade

Midt på Vesterbro arbejder billedkunstneren Bolatta Silis-Høegh, på gulvet, på væggene og sågar i loftet folder hendes kunstneriske univers sig ud, ledsaget af en kæmpe stor, udstoppet ravn, der konstant holder øje.

Det første værk, jeg møder, er et maleri af en muslingeskal, der rejser sig fra gulv til loft. Halvt åben, halvt lukket synes den at spørge: Kommer du ind, eller bliver du ude? “Jeg var begyndt på et portræt, troede jeg, men portrættet ville være en musling,” siger kunstneren og slår ud med armene, som var det en diskussion, hun netop havde tabt. For her lyttes og mærkes efter. “Den kvindelige cyklus er en superpower, hver dag er en ny dag” understreger hun, mens mine øjne borer sig ind i muslingeskallen.

Allerede som barn arbejdede hun med hårde overflader og bløde indersider, og da samtalen falder på hendes opvækst, spørger jeg, om hjemmet var et teater. “Oh yezzz med z,” svarer hun højlydt og prompte. Et kunstnerhjem præget af moderens billedkunst og faderens fotografi var et sted, hvor hun tidligt blev opmærksom på sine egne sanser og værdier. “Jeg fik en ballon,” siger hun og rækker mig en usynlig ballonsnor, “altså når tingene var svære derhjemme,” uddyber hun. Der var ikke plads til tungsind og tristesse, så udadtil måtte hun agere rolig, mens hun dirrede indeni. 

Sit sande ansigt

Mit blik falder på et portræt, som ifølge kunstneren er “et tre-i-en-portræt”. Som et Kinderæg, tænker jeg. To svævende ansigter ser ned mod et lille menneske, der ligger som et foster. De tre figurer er forbundet, og der opstår en fornemmelse af ægte omsorg. Værket føles tidløst, som om det rummer generationers kærlighed: fra bedstemoderen til datteren og videre til det lille barnebarn. Beskueren inviteres til at blive holdt om, svøbt og beskyttet. Hvad enten det sker gennem meterlange baner af håndtegnede stofrester, gamle bemalede duge fra bedstemoderen eller på hørlærredet, synes kunstneren at pakke os ind.

Det er ikke tilfældige antagelser og gætterier, hun benytter når hun arbejder. Hun ser. Hun ser bag masken og facaden og synes at vide, hvad man går og gemmer på. Hendes blik er konstant skarpt, analytisk og nærmest overnaturligt. Hænderne er talerør. Under en depression begyndte hun at portrættere sig selv som en slags visuel dagbog, en viljestærk bedrift, at bevæge sig fra mørket mod lyset, ført an af en blyant på papir, langsomt transformeret.

Flyvende start

Silis-Høegh er en kunstner som drømmer, visualiserer, observerer og kreerer. Selv siger hun “Jeg er en fugl, der er meget fugl i mig,” og fortsætter "i næsten alle mine drømme som barn fløj jeg hen over landskaberne.” Allerede dengang så hun verden fra et andet perspektiv.

Det var en evne, hun blev bevidst om i en tidlig alder. Hun var god til at tegne, og blev endnu dygtigere under et studieår i New Zealand, så langt væk fra Kalaallit Nunaat, som man næsten kan komme, lader hun mig forstå. Her var hendes talent så tydeligt, at billedkunstlæreren straks fik øje på potentialet og ryddede baglokalet, så den unge kunstner kunne folde vingerne ud.

Silis betyder skovskade på lettisk beretter kunstneren, hvilket passer så smukt sammen med Høegh. Kunstneren har altid været flyvende, i fuld fart, på vej, på en mission. “Et par gange om året lykkedes det mig at komme dertil, hvor selvbevidstheden forsvinder, og alt bliver til dans, sang og maleri,” siger hun. Men selvom selvbevidstheden er til stede på mange af årets øvrige dage, gør det ikke kunsten ringere. Vi har brug for Silis-Høeghs nerve, mod og umiddelbarhed, egenskaber der både kan virke helende og skabe røre. Vi har brug for hendes universer og fortællinger.

Dans i takt

Naturen er hele tiden til stede i Silis-Høeghs værker, ikke mindst gennem en særlig forståelse af cyklus. De cirkulære bevægelser viser sig både i værkernes tematik og i hendes arbejdsproces, hvor hun danser rundt om lærredet på gulvet. Ved kristendommens indtog blev trommesang forbudt i Kalaallit Nunaat, fordi den blev betragtet som hedensk. Nu tramper Silis-Høegh så taktfast i gulvet, at fortidens skygger langsomt synes at kunne slippe taget.

For kunstneren bærer traumerne med sig. “Traumer kan følge dig i syv generationer, altså hvis de ikke er italesat,” fortæller hun. “De nedarves epigenetisk.” De generationelle, kollektive, postkoloniale og personlige traumer bringer hun frem i lyset med både mod og elegance. Det er sårbart, vigtigt og katartisk.

Verdens korteste psykologtime

Selvom kunstneren siger, at hun “keder sig hurtigt”, er der en særlig tyngde i hvert værk. “Jeg har et skidegodt portræt ansigt," udbryder hun, og vi griner stort af den helt legitime konstatering. Når Silis-Høegh maler et ansigt, skal hun næsten ikke røre lærredet, før man mærker personens tilstedeværelse. “Jeg har en stor næse og store øjne, jeg er både smuk og grim.” De fleste af figurerne er direkte spejlinger af kunstneren selv. 

Hun tager derpå et maleri frem af en kvinde, der er svøbt, i rotation, pakket ind og beskyttet. “Den krop, som vi har fået at vide var forkert, ulækker og besværlig”, er den, hun vil hylde, forklarer hun. Transitioner og forvandlinger er centrale fortællinger i hendes kunst, og det står klart, at vi ifølge kunstneren selv må tage del i arbejdet. “Hvis du siger, det er skide hårdt, skal det nok blive skide hårdt.” Sætningen hænger i luften som en ultrakort psykologtime og et wake-upcall til den selvmedlidende interviewer.

Skidengrøn og fluorescerende pink  

Farverne indgår også i maleriets cyklus, men hos Silis-Høegh er den forskudt. Efteråret bearbejdes om foråret og foråret om efteråret. Farveskalaen hentes blandt andet fra fortiden. Faderens National Geographic-magasiner fra 1970’erne og 1980’erne er med til at bestemme nutidens palette. Hendes egen datter kalder den olivengrønne for skidengrøn. 

Når det ikke er de nedtonede farver, der dominerer, træder barndommens Mattels Roller Skating Barbie-univers frem i al sin koloristiske pragt. “Barbie havde den ultimative frihed, når hun rullede på rulleskøjter i farvestrålende tøj,” siger hun. Jeg ser straks den unge kunstner suse af sted i rasende fart, med store øreringe, håret sat og et bredt smil, ganske velklædt, selvfølgelig, mens mit blik rammer en fluorescerende pink malerklat på lærredet foran mig.

Den helende hermafrodit 

En musling set fra fugleperspektiv ligner Kalaallit Nunaat. Hermafroditens hårde skal og bløde kerne spejler en kunstner, der rummer flere sider. “Jeg ser mig selv som kvinde, men der er også mand i mig, ligesom muslingens form i mine malerier både er vulva og fallisk, jeg er mange ting,” fastslår hun.

Foran mig står en kunstner med ukuelig alvor, flere generationers historie på ryggen og en stemme der insisterer på at blive hørt. Silis-Høegh kæmper for mere omsorg og større lydhørhed, mens hun messer sit mantra: “Du behøver ikke bekræftelse udefra, kærligheden kommer indefra, du er god nok.”