Since beginning to work with film and video in 2000, Jesper Just (b. Denmark, 1974) has created a boldly stylized body of work that straddles the boundaries between performance art, installation, and cinema. Just’s work challenges conventional views of gender and sexuality, blurs the line between fantasy and reality, and, like the work of Michaelangelo Antonioni, explores the intense psychological (dis)connect between body and space. His protagonists navigate both highly aestheticized interiors marked with expressionistic shadows, and lush, naturalistic exteriors. Like Maya Deren in At Land, these characters are physically, emotionally, and psychologically alienated from the world around them. Conventional gender roles and notions of behavior are the true villains in Just’s work; his heroes are those who are able—however momentarily—to overcome their inhibitions and turn repressive environments into highly emotive performance spaces.