19

As we may remember, Linnea’s legs are also bare as she stands looking out the window in Copenhagen. However, something other than the fact that they both have bare legs sticking out from a piece of clothing—an oversized man’s shirt in one case and a dressing gown that was found in the hotel bathroom in the other—links Trine and Linnea, and this is that they both went to see the exhibition “Postfeminist Art” in Bergen on the same day, seventeen months ago. But they differed as far as what they liked and didn’t like in the exhibition. Trine liked Tracey Emin’s work, which included, among other things, her famous line drawings of drunk women in high heels, and she perhaps particularly liked the line drawing of a woman’s crotch with a woman’s hand quite clearly masturbating (on said crotch), and that under the leg it said Oh yeh [sic!] in shaky letters, as though it had been written with the other hand, haha! Trine’s then inner self rejoiced. In addition, she deeply appreciated Emin’s patchwork quilt with its provocative motto. She adored the fact that Emin had used this, the oldest and most pathetic expression of female art or craftsmanship, the quilt, and that she’d written on them things like: “Every time I see my shit yeah I know nothing stays in my body.” Linnea, on the other hand, didn’t feel anything in particular at the sight of this work—that is to say, initially she felt a form of exasperated irritation; it wasn’t that she couldn’t appreciate what was original and daring about the presentation of provocative, naked sexual organs, she just thought they were predictable declarations that Everything Is Horrible, Everything Is Shameful, Everything Is Difficult, Broken from the Start, and Impossible to Keep Hold Of. Everything Falls to Pieces and Is Problematic. And Chaotic. Forever. Ha, ha. That, thought Linnea, was maybe true of the more depressive periods in one’s life. But it’s not always the case! thought Linnea, who experienced herself as the glittering but enclosed play of light in a chandelier. Linnea only found herself trembling when she stood in front of a small picture of a glittering palace, painted by Karen Kilimnik. A tiny glittering palace painted in light blue glitter on a big white surface, and a bit farther down there was a proud, rearing glitter horse, which was light blue as well, with a saddle on its back. At the bottom of the picture was the text: “Soon the glitter horse will arrive to take me to the ball at the glitter palace.” And Linnea felt everything quiver, because this expressed her deepest wish in life in so many ways, it was so hopeless and childish and almost ironic, world-weary, yet still sincere and genuinely hopeful of finding a glitter palace and horse, and a ball. And Göran, glittering and galloping toward her, in the future. So, on that day, but at different times, two women left the exhibition, the one called Trine, who felt reinvigorated and shameless and not a little devil-may-care as she met the air outside the gallery, and the other called Linnea, who met the air full of hope as she looked up at the sky and saw that it too was light blue.