Laura Limbourg: Shivering Tenderness: Solo Exhibition
The Profound Stillness Within
Text by Sih-Yu Chen
In Greek mythology, Medusa-the Gorgon with serpentine hair-was deemed a monster whose gaze could turn men to stone. Yet, French feminist theorist Hélène Cixous boldly reinterprets this myth in her seminal essay The Laugh of the Medusa (1975). She argues that those who dare to look Medusa in the eye will find her beautiful smile, and that her laughter embodies resistance and liberation. Cixous proposed a subversive mode of écriture féminine-a writing through the body-that releases women from patriarchal structures and invites a fluid, nonlinear language of creation. When we look into the paintings of Belgian artist Laura Limbourg (b. 1996), we seem to hear that same quiet yet unyielding laughter echoing from deep within the canvas-the laughter of Medusa.
Born in Belgium and raised partly in the Czech Republic, Limbourg studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and joined the Taipei National University of the Arts as an exchange student in 2020. She later spent six months traveling across Southeast Asia. Her early works drew inspiration from these journeys, exploring themes of womanhood and empowerment among sex workers. After a period in the United States-where she was influenced by the bright Miami light-she produced a series of paintings grounded in vivid reds. Now, upon completing her studies at the University of Oxford in 2025, Limbourg presents Shivering Tenderness at YIRI ARTS in Taipei, marking her latest solo exhibition and a compelling testament to her evolving practice.
In her visual language, fragmented female bodies intertwine with vases, jungles, foliage, urban streets, and solitary figures. Each work becomes a convergence of East and West, interior and exterior, intimacy and distance-revealing a world constructed from her personal mythology.
The Body as a Site of Resistance
Cixous once wrote, "When a woman writes herself, she returns to the body." This return is not merely to reclaim what was once suppressed; it is an act of grounding thought in the flesh. In Limbourg's practice, the body likewise occupies a central place.
For centuries, the patriarchal art historical canon has objectified the female form as a passive subject of the gaze. From the early twentieth century onward, women artists such as Frida Kahlo began to challenge this by asserting the body as a site of pain, power, and self-definition. Limbourg's approach, however, takes a different route. Rather than overt confrontation, she renders the female body as translucent, partially merging with dimly lit surroundings. This ambiguity destabilizes habitual modes of looking and disrupts conventional eroticism.
In her series Crush(ed), a woman in sheer stockings lies face-down on a field dotted with small white flowers, her fingertips glowing in neon red. The imagery suggests sensuality, yet the figure's hidden face and subdued background evoke melancholy rather than seduction. This tension resists simplistic interpretation. Similarly, in Shivering Tenderness, a woman shields her face with one hand as a white horse stands beside her. In Western iconography, the white horse signifies purity, triumph, and divine authority-as seen in the Book of Revelation, where Christ rides upon one. Within Limbourg's world, however, the symbol transforms: the juxtaposition between the luminous horse and the shadowed figure suggests a silent dialogue-a meditation on struggle and solitude suspended between light and darkness.
The Fluidity of Symbols
Limbourg's connection with Taiwan deepened her engagement with Eastern visual languages. Her Vase series, including works such as Vase with Tiger and Vase with Dragon, originated during her time in Taipei. Using bold, childlike lines and diluted pigments, she deconstructs the intricate motifs of traditional ceramics, leaving behind uneven contours and stains that speak of fragility and spontaneity. For Limbourg, the vase is more than a decorative object; it becomes a metaphor for the female body-delicate, ornamental, and culturally inscribed.
In Shivering Stillness II, a woman and a vase lie side by side amid the grass, their forms intertwined. Through this juxtaposition, the vase transcends its function to embody layered meanings of tradition, femininity, and cultural inheritance.
Another recurring symbol in her work is the snake, whose multiplicity of meanings across cultures enriches Limbourg's visual narrative. In the West, the snake often connotes temptation and sin-from Eve's seduction in Eden to Medusa's curse. In contrast, in Eastern mythology, the serpent embodies renewal and creation: the Chinese goddess Nüwa, half-woman and half-snake, is revered as the mother of humankind. The act of shedding skin symbolizes regeneration and cyclical rebirth.
In Void, a woman lies prone in the grass while a snake twists its head backward in the lower corner. The flowing, undulating contours of both bodies form a shared rhythm. Here, the serpent is no longer merely a Western emblem of guilt or seduction-it becomes a dynamic force of empathy and transformation. Through this interplay, Limbourg constructs a field of layered emotions: fear, sorrow, defiance, and tenderness. Her reimagination of the Medusa myth aligns with Cixous's call for reclaiming feminine desire as strength rather than sin.
From Radiance to Stillness: A Dialogue Within the Soul
Compared to her 2022 solo exhibition Dragon and His Tale at YIRI ARTS, in which she employed vibrant hues to reinterpret Eastern motifs and the female form, Shivering Tenderness signals a profound shift. Her palette has turned darker, her compositions quieter. Yet this restraint amplifies, rather than diminishes, her intensity.
The new works do not seek to narrate-they invite contemplation. Through muted tones and atmospheric silence, Limbourg stages a ritual of introspection, fusing Eastern symbols, Western myth, and embodied experience into a single poetic continuum. She no longer shouts; she murmurs. Her canvases breathe in whispers-subtle, feminine, yet piercing-drawing the viewer into an encounter with the unseen and the unsaid.
In her paintings, Medusa no longer needs her serpents to command fear. She simply smiles. And in that silent smile, we find an eloquent and powerful response to the contemporary art world itself.
Note: Hélène Cixous, Le Rire de la Méduse (trans. Milano), Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2023.
