Chisinau, Moldova. Hometown to 12 year old Duca and the stage for her debut exhibition. Bright, abstract and bold, even then. Venice Biennale, 2011. 16 year old Duca enters the international art space for the first time. The UK, one year later. She begins Art History studies at the University of St Andrews. Now at 29, in Oslo, she has exhibitions from around the globe under her belt in her 16 year long career, and has captured what it feels like to be a young woman today like no other. Bright, surreal, and too close to home—her current form.
The transition from girlhood to womanhood is a frightening, maddening experience that is often difficult to translate tangibly into text. With much of the shift happening internally it is not so easy to mirror this to the outside world if not in a shared look, moment, ritual. If you love Fiona Apple and HBO’s Girls, Duca is here to complete your triptych. Luckily, no words are needed to aid Duca in her depiction of this universal experience. Oil paints, a reference image of a model (but more often of herself) and an understanding of the fragmentation of self, memory, depression, and madness is all she needs to create art that is at its core 21st century womanhood.
Morning Routine, 2023, is where acquaintances were made. A simple glimpse into the universal experience of sitting on your bedroom floor and putting make-up on for the day ahead. Here, she is not trying to flaunt a glamorized version of this daily routine—just a girl in a robe on hardwood. It’s a piece that makes you feel seen nonetheless, warming in its mundanity.
It is rewinding in time to visit her previous collections where true connection is forged. Self-portrait after self-portrait, Duca is unafraid to immortalize the complex moments of life that are more often than not concealed behind closed doors; padlocked shut for peace of mind. From breakdowns and dissociation to bed rotting and reveling in the modern day epidemic of reliance on parasocial relationships—her 2018 – 2021 collections are a love letter to the womanhood of today that dons a slew of masks. As comforting and reassuring as a hug from a loved one, she welcomes us into a judgment free zone to ruminate and revisit as a collective.
The Dollhouse is the perfect summation of the power her art wields. Transitioning from girl to woman, dependent to independent, a moment to a memory; it captures it all. Her depiction of this scary transformation from child to adult is visceral. The home that was once so big is now so small and the dresses you lived in now gape at the back. Like the painting, the realization is surreal and sickeningly corporeal all at once.
Intimate explorations of mental health give further depth to her study of the modern day woman. A Hundred Days of Happiness, 2020, is for the anti-depressant girlies. From sobbing to being in love with the little white pill that makes it all a bit numb, her self-portrait is a communal portrait for many on the medication as we all cheer in unison, ‘thank you SSRIs!’. No longer something to be hidden and ashamed of, she embraces happiness in its chemical form with equal reverence to the serotonin some are fortunate to house in their brain without the assistance of a silver wrapped blister pack. The more surreal depiction of not-so-perfect mental health in Overwhelmed II, 2020, is raw and ethereal all at once. The same can be said for being a woman.
More domestic scenes are treated with just as much care and conviction in Duca’s world. Wrapping up in your duvet and staring into vast nothingness, trying on clothes for the weekend and having no luck, and deliciously depressing doom scrolling; she’s painted it all for the girls. In her world, by illustrating her own internal battles, she paints the faces of the multi-dimensional beings women are today. She opens the window to the houses we have locked these sides of ourselves in and invites these banished sides of us in
Alexa play by ‘Sullen Girl’ by Fiona Apple.