Elsa Rouy

“How can we live with each other and enjoy our bodies, and each other’s bodies, when we know that desire is part of an endless chain—and that it is being in this chain that makes us alive? How do we live out our desire without hurting other people? What do other people need to know about our desire?” [1]

The nude has been present in art history for centuries. From the opulent Venus of Willendorf through the seemingly perfect Greek sculptures and their Roman copies; from the splendid Baroque nymphs and modern stripped-bare brides to their contemporary counterparts—the naked body has always accompanied us, although often dressed up in mythology, religion, or the search for beauty. The nude was first and foremost a study of ideal form, with a few exceptions such as Gothic distortions that emphasized the naked body as an object of shame and sin. The classic postures of ancient sculpture were static and immovable, as if frozen in their attempt to maintain eternal splendor. These postures were endlessly repeated—as a mantra of art history—allowing only minor variations over time.

More disturbing than the posture was the nude itself, indirectly posing the question: whose naked body was allowed to be shown? While there was consensus about goddesses, admired for their smooth, hairless perfection, and heroes whose athletic bodies were deemed necessary for our safety, the situation became more complicated when socioeconomic changes in the 19th century introduced women of flesh and blood as the central figures of the nude. The scandal caused by Édouard Manet’s Olympia (1863) is difficult to understand today, but the public’s emotions of loathing and repulsion were as real as the comfortable, non-idealized body of the well-known artist’s model, Victorine Meurent. The fatal attraction of women bathing, dancing, drinking, and seducing was scrutinized by the public eye through the male lorgnon. This challenge progressed in postwar 20th-century art, when the nude became contorted and troubled—think of Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud—or in the magnificent, honest nudes of Joan Semmel and later Jenny Saville, in whose works the body remains alluring yet somewhat abhorrent in its mortality and flaws.

Elsa Rouy’s work is part of this great tradition of the nude, which she consciously carries forward in a masterful manner. For her, the body is a vast territory of painterly possibilities. Painting offers the opportunity not to honor the limitations of what a body actually can or should do; instead, it allows experimentation with a body that does not need to conform to the morals or borders of the world we live in. The bodies Rouy paints seem uncontrollable in themselves—too sovereign to obey any logical rules of behavior.

The artist works without a preconceived narrative to guide the making of the image. Rather, she agrees to be guided by the paint, which forces her mind and hands to make specific choices, as if the image itself dictated the conditions of its existence. She intentionally makes her female nudes strong and bold, sometimes even idealized, while her male nudes appear softer, more fragile, and imperfect—as if she sought to subvert persistent traditional views of gender relations. In both female and male bodies, Rouy often paints herself: her female nudes may function as self-portraits, though without obvious likeness, while the male figures are painted as she imagines she would feel if she were a man. All of them, however individual they may be, share the same idea of the human condition.

Our contemporary body lives in turbulent times. It has become not only a battlefield of self-determination but also a fashion item and the object of private PR campaigns on social media, where ubiquitous nakedness threatens to turn it into a harmless corpse. Elsa Rouy, by contrast, succeeds in making the body relevant and tangible. The fingers she paints dive into imaginary flesh; hands leave their imprint on the skin; breasts are soft and eyes piercing. The skin becomes almost a living organism in its own right: it folds, stretches, breathes, and erupts. Various body parts seem to follow their own internal logic—sometimes melting entirely into the body, at other times abruptly ceasing to exist. In paintings where bodies are entangled, their painted skin forms a kind of protection from each other. The background is reduced to minimal spatial marks: perhaps a horizon line, or another body functioning as a barrier. The layers of paint never seem to cease in revealing another layer beneath.

Rouy’s paintings do not intentionally seek to shock or harm, especially since reactions to nudity or traces of violence are deeply personal and uncontrollable. She wants them to possess a certain attraction—something that softens harshness—so that viewers still want to engage with them, even within the discomfort they provoke. Rouy’s unsettling nudes are neither erotic nor pornographic; if desire is present, it is a desire to act, though its object remains unclear. Even when still, the figures possess agency and a purpose inherent to their existence. They have the potential to touch the very essence of human experience by operating outside the realms of sexuality and conventional beauty.

Who is afraid of the nude? The body has long been a vehicle for discussions that matter most: the freedom of self-determination, recently tested by, among other things, anti-abortion laws; the right to enjoy one’s own sexuality without the heavy burden of social control; the freedom to choose a partner with whom to live—something that, strangely enough, is not always obvious and can, in extreme cases, even result in femicide. Rouy’s genuinely distorted bodies refuse to respect the borders of social or political consensus and therefore offer ideas of resistance.

The title of Rouy’s first institutional exhibition in Poland, “Just Because”, addresses the artist’s confidence and determination to show what is uneasy, suppressed, yet highly important. At the same time, through its vague formulation, it emphasizes how many things that matter remain unsaid, unspoken, hidden, and unforeseen. The body, as a tool of knowledge, may offer a way to navigate the world in these testing times.

“I just love painting,” says Rouy. “It is a process of permanent learning” [2]

[1] Elkin L, Scaffolding, 2024, Vintage, p. 325/326

[2] Elsa Rouy in interview with the author on 22nd of December 2025.