Ovartaci’s 56 years in psychiatric care inspire new exhibition

Artist Noah Umur Kanber has opened a major exhibition in Aarhus inspired by Ovartaci, a Danish artist who spent most of his life in a psychiatric ward. The exhibition, reported by DR, explores gender and identity through Ovartaci’s life and Kanber’s own experiences.

Ovartaci, whose birth name was Louis Marcussen, was transgender and lived as both a man and a woman. He spent 56 years as a patient at a psychiatric ward in Risskov, where he created art that questioned the world around him. He died in 1985.

Kanber, 34, is also transgender and sees parallels between their experiences. The exhibition focuses on the period when Ovartaci lived as a woman, at a time when being transgender was considered a mental illness and could lead to hospitalisation.

One of Kanber’s works consists of 56 dolls, one for each year Ovartaci was hospitalised. Dolls featured prominently in Ovartaci’s art and became companions for the artist, Kanber said.

Ovartaci was initially admitted amid suspicion that he had schizophrenia. In 1954, while trying to transform himself into a woman, he cut off his penis with a hammer and chisel in the hospital’s carpentry workshop. He later underwent gender reassignment surgery and asked to be transferred to a women’s ward.

Ovartaci lived as a woman for about 15 years, but in his seventies began distancing himself from that identity and wanted to be referred to as a man. Kanber says Ovartaci’s struggle for the right to live as a woman remains relevant to queer people today.

The exhibition, titled “Kuk Kuk, is it me who is crazy?”, is on view at Museum Ovartaci in Aarhus until April 2027.